


Lost in the Dusk

by TheCommissioner



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-03 16:43:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4107841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCommissioner/pseuds/TheCommissioner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The comforting walls of society are gone.</p><p>London has been forsaken.<br/>Bradford is destroyed.<br/>Ireland is poisoned.<br/>Holmes Chapel lies empty.</p><p>The survivors have sought refuge in the relatively sparse expanse of Scotland. A shadow government maintains order – and gives protection from the undead threats that shamble through the dark. Five young men from completely different backgrounds find themselves thrown together, learning how to survive in an unforgiving landscape of apocalyptic horror. Their group has been designated a scout team – sent out to gather information, investigate locations, and find supplies as well as missing people.</p><p>Lightly equipped, emotionally traumatized, dangerously outnumbered, and isolated from any other living beings, these five inexperienced youths are now symbols of order in the diseased wilderness, traveling cracked streets and bloodstained fields through the devastation in a series of never-ending quests.</p><p>With life the way they knew it gone from the Earth, each of these young men now find themselves searching for solace in each other and in the ruins of the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "This Is Not A Test"

**MONDAY THE 8 TH**

**LONDON, ENGLAND [CURRENTLY BEING ESTABLISHED AS QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA]**

__

_This is the Emergency Warning Notification System. This is not a test._

_Please stand by for further information._

_This station has interrupted its regularly scheduled programming at the order of the Home Office and the Ministry of_ _Defence_ _to bring you timely warnings and information bulletins from the government. Please stay tuned, and remain calm._

_A nationwide epidemic has currently taken hold. This viral strain, called DX23, is particularly contagious and can have severe effects on individuals who are not inoculated. The government and the commonwealth’s pharmaceutical companies are working around the clock to provide the civilian population with a vaccination, after they have provided them for the Armed Forces. This measure is vital to the national security of the United Kingdom, and is absolutely necessary._

_Symptoms of the DX23 strain are: nausea, vomiting blood, excruciating headaches, temporary muscle spasms, and loss of consciousness. Afflicted persons may become incoherent or unaware of their surroundings, and caution should be used around them. If an afflicted family member or individual you are with loses consciousness, notify the authorities immediately. Isolate any afflicted individuals in another room until authorities are able to arrive and treat them appropriately._

_The DX23 virus is transmitted primarily by contact with the bodily fluids of the infected individual and possibly by airborne transmission in enclosed areas. The airborne method of transmission is unconfirmed, but all precautions should be taken._

_Not all members of the population can be infected. Government medical personnel have confirmed cases of immunity; but this immunity can best be attributed to genetics rather than a specific age group. DO NOT assume that you are immune. Take all necessary precautions against infection._

_It is advised for you to remain in your home or place of business until military, police, fire brigade, Civil Defence, or other emergency service personnel evacuate your quarter._

_This station is currently transmitting for the greater London metropolitan area._

_Be advised that all airports have been shut down and the national airspace has been closed, and that select rail stations in London will be used for priority evacuations. The population will be given a health screening when they arrive at an evacuation center, and will be processed accordingly._

_Martial law is in effect, and a nationwide curfew of 9 P.M. has been ordered. All civil liberties have been suspended, under the order of the Prime Minister and the Crown. Any individual out past curfew who is not being evacuated will be detained without right to legal counsel. Any individual who refuses to obey the orders of military, police, Civil Defence, or emergency personnel may be subject to the use of lethal force._

_Tune to the Wartime Broadcasting Service, formerly the BBC, for a live emergency transmission, when conditions permit such a broadcast._

_You are listening to the National Emergency Warning System. Remain indoors, remain calm, and stand by for further information._

_This is not a test._

_\--------------------------------_

_This is the Emergency Warning Notification System. This is not a test._

_Please stand by for further information._

_This station has interrupted its regular programming at the order of the Home Offi-_

**__**

**_LOUIS WILLIAM TOMLINSON -- AGE: 23 YEARS – OCCUPATION: NURSING STUDENT -- DX23 HEALTH STATUS: UNKNOWN IF COMPROMISED BY INFECTION_**

Louis Tomlinson muted the TV in his apartment on the outskirts of London. He looked at the bag on his couch that was packed with important papers, clothing, and a few mementoes he wanted to have to remember happier times. Holding the most important one to him in his hand, he used his free hand to tuck his passport into the breast pocket of his wool overcoat. The silver bracelet that Ian had given him with _“I. & L.” _ etched onto its back clenched in his hand, Louis brought the cold metal to his lips as he let his thoughts roam. 

Sure, he didn’t think that London was in real danger; it was only a virus, after all. This, all of his stuff, would all be here when he got back. But he didn’t know how long he’d have to be gone; so it paid to bring the important things. 

A police van rolled by on the street, its blue lights flashing through Louis’ windows. The loudspeaker on the roof droned on as it passed by, snapping him out of his wandering thoughts. 

_“This quarter will be evacuated in twenty minutes. All civilians should bring a form of identification and one suitcase of belongings per person. You have twenty minutes.”_

Louis turned back to the TV, which was still on the repeating automated system, and he turned it off. It was the only thing he had been hearing for the past few days. 

He just hoped his mum, his sisters, and Ian were all okay. 

*********

**SATURDAY THE 6 TH – 1100 HOURS** ****

**HOLMES CHAPEL, CHESHIRE EAST, COUNTY OF CHESHIRE [CURRENTLY BEING ESTABLISHED AS QUARANTINE SECTOR JULIET]**

**_HARRY EDWARD STYLES – AGE: 19 YEARS -- OCCUPATION: STUDENT, CASHIER -- DX23 HEALTH STATUS: UNKNOWN_**

Harry Styles looked out his front window at the policemen in the street, his bright green eyes peeking cautiously over the edge of the frame. They were gathered around a crashed vehicle – a bright red convertible that had smashed into a utility pole – and were talking amongst themselves. Harry’s mum Anne had dialed 999 when she saw the car crash out the kitchen window, and was putting on shoes to go out and help any injured people when Harry had walked out of his room to see what the trouble was. 

But Anne wasn’t going outside anymore; 999 had taken care of that. The dispatcher had told her to stay inside and wait for the rescue services, and had to practically yell at Anne to get her to listen, which she only did out of deference for authority. After hanging up the phone, Anne remarked to Harry that all of the emergency services people seemed rather haggard today. 

Harry turned his gaze back outside to the wreckage, which was partially obscured by the low hedge in front of their quaint home. He noticed the conspicuous absence of the rescue services that the dispatcher had promised were coming. Only the police had showed up, looking inside the car and pointing while muttering to each other. No paramedics, no fire brigade, not even a tow truck to take care of the wreckage. 

And the police weren’t the same either, having taken a different appearance from when Harry last saw some of them yesterday. Sure, they were the same officers that Harry often saw around Homes Chapel and recognized from a few encounters (some of his school parties hadn’t been exactly low-key), but all sorts of things were off about them. 

Some of the constables sported blue riot helmets with flip-down ballistic visors, while others wore black padded jackets in lieu of their familiar yellow reflective windbreakers. And all of them wore thick utility vests that Harry rarely saw, coupled with black boots instead of shined shoes. 

Another thing that disturbed Harry was what they were carrying. Each officer had scores of plastic zip-tie handcuffs looped on their belts or tucked into their vests, like they were going off to quell a full-sized riot right here in quiet little Holmes Chapel. 

And each officer had a firearm. 

That made Harry’s skin crawl more than anything else. He didn’t really like guns. Even in London, a big city with big-city crime, the majority of policemen were unarmed, and those that were armed were either part of an Armed Response Unit or were Authorized Firearms Officers in specially marked patrol cars. Here in Holmes Chapel, they had very few AFOs and one large ARU that they shared with the rest of the county. 

For every officer to be armed was an omen of grim severity. Harry looked over the officers again, making a mental catalogue of their identities. That one right there, leaning against the fence, was a traffic enforcement officer who should be the last constable that had to be armed, let alone slinging a submachine gun over his shoulder. 

One of the officers looked towards Harry’s home and saw him looking out the window, and he straightened up a little and turned towards the house. The constable made a shooing gesture, and Harry dropped back down out of sight, going over the last image of the street he saw in his head. 

The spots of dried blood on the policeman’s gloves and the black gas mask hanging around the man’s neck burned themselves into Harry’s retinas long after he had stopped looking. 

***** 

**MONDAY THE 8 th**

**BRADFORD, WEST YORKSHIRE [CURRENTLY BEING ESTABLISHED AS QUARANTINE ZONE MIKE]**

**_ZAYN MALIK -- AGE: 21 YEARS -- OCCUPATION: UNIVERSITY STUDENT, PART-TIME CASHIER -- DX23 HEALTH STATUS: SOON TO BE DETERMINED AS UNINFECTED (AS PER EXAMINATION BY MEDICS FROM 80 BATTALION, 7 TH RIFLE REGIMENT) _ **

Zayn Malik listened to the sirens, enchanted by their howling. 

Sirens had come and gone all through the day. In the early morning hours one heard the unique two-tones of the fire brigade that rushed to flames springing up in the poorer areas of the city, accompanied by the shrill klaxons of ambulances that accompanied them for any injuries. By ten in the morning, fires were appearing in the southwest portion of the city, and it seemed that every fire truck in Bradford was down there to battle the blazes. 

But in the eastern part of the city the two-tones were replaced by ambulance sirens, soon to be overlaid with the fast wails of police sirens as disturbing reports came in from the paramedics. By noon, the fires were extinguished in the southwest and the rest of the city, but police cars now rushed to that very same area as the fire brigade found things... the most curious things. 

Sometime between noon and two o’clock, everything had gone straight to some perverse form of hell. One street would be completely untouched, with a decent amount of pedestrians hurrying home and glancing nonchalantly about, if not a little bit nervously. The next street would be full of wreckage; crashed cars, overturned bins, shattered windows, and people would be running in every direction. Constables would be handcuffing some people, beating others with batons – and more and more frequently, shooting an enraged figure with their newly acquired sidearms as screams and sirens converged from all directions. 

There was a third type of street, deserted but ominous in itself. This type of street seemed as if someone had just left the room, given the sense that it was just abandoned only moments before. A newspaper would be neatly folded on a bench; a cup of coffee or tea on the sidewalk, the puddle of spilled fluid steaming slightly and still spreading; a purse resting on the roof of a parked car, as if its owner had merely run back inside to get their car keys. Any stray pedestrian who chose their path down one of these streets sometimes passed through unhindered. Other times they barely made it out. And frequently, some wouldn’t reach their destination out of that street. Typically seen on this third type of street was a lone police car parked in the middle of the lane, its blue lights flashing and doors wide open, but no sign of its occupants anywhere. If you paid attention you would notice a baton lying on the pavement, blood drying on its end, and if you listened closely you would hear the squawking of a radio inside the patrol car. But it would probably be the last thing you ever heard. 

_The_ sirens had started around three-thirty or four. They were metal monsters left over from the Cold War; rusting Carter air raid sirens tucked onto the roofs of older city buildings that hesitated to work at first, but soon got their gears into motion and started an eerie howl that rose above all other noises in the city. 

Zayn had only heard them a handful of times before when they were tested, but it was always at half-power and never for longer than fifteen seconds. But the sirens kept on sounding now, their wail sounding almost mournful as it went up and down, up and down, up and down in pitch. Various noises from the city could be discerned from underneath the waves of sound –the crash of metal on metal, a police car speeding by, shouting, and gunshots ebbed from here to there, never staying in one place and timed sporadically. 

Zayn, who was home from university on holiday, risked going out onto the streets shortly after lunch – against his mother’s wishes, but he had ignored her (like always) and snuck out. Zayn had long since tried his parents’ patience over and over again from the early stages of his adolescence; getting tattoos, smoking cigarettes, staying out late drinking when he could to keep up his image of a bad boy thug to his friends, not really concerned with his parents’ wishes for him. He used to hang around a group that was much shadier, but a few close encounters with the Bradford Constabulary had caused an intervention by his parents and some friends that had inexplicably kept him in mind, even after he had abandoned them in favor of “cooler” mates. With their encouragement, he turned to his artistic side and used sketchpads to express all of his emotions in vivid imagery, rather than hanging around like a thug in sketchy places. His anger, sadness, frustration, contentment, and happiness were all bound within the pages of the sketchpad he always had on his person, and he was able to cope much more easily now. 

For the past few years of university (studying art at University College London) he had made himself into a better person and had friends who were actually respectable to be around, enjoying his newly refreshed life as he worked towards completing his studies in art. Zayn was actually very, _very_ skilled at drawing, and his professors – who often showcased his art in exhibitions around London) were starting to get contacts for him in graphic design and advertising companies that were well known and offered full-time jobs with excellent pay. He felt accomplished, and managed to find a seemingly perfect balance between his artistic side and his former personality. Zayn still was a little withdrawn and introverted, but he had enough friends that were allowed to see his true self to qualify him as well-adjusted to his new life. To strangers or people that he didn’t care to associate with, he was cloistered yet mysterious, which was perfectly fine for an artist like himself. In fact, he was the perfect stereotype of a reclusive artist of great talent, and didn’t mind one bit. Playing it cool and slightly holier-than-thou to some of the idiots of the world was satisfying to him, even if he looked like an arse in some situations. 

Passing by an overturned lorry, Zayn turned a corner to gaze upon an apartment building. Cries for help could be heard within, and Zayn stayed rooted to his spot in morbid fascination as two ambulances rolled up to the building. 

But paramedics did not step out of the ambulances. Police officers in black and blue tactical gear with gas masks and black helmets jumped out of the ambulances and headed into the building. Gunshots and yells were heard from inside the structure, and Zayn watched the police come back outside. Alone. 

Ambulances were no longer carrying the sick and injured, instead acting as impromptu police transports as the need for conveyance grew dire. Zayn was passed by three more ambulances, all holding ARUs, not paramedics or patients. 

He would have gone on and explored this new version of Bradford further, but Zayn was halted in his tracks by a low buzzing sound from overhead. Looking up, Zayn watched an air ambulance helicopter pass low overhead, smoke rolling out of its interior through a partially open side door. His eyes tracked the helicopter as it twisted and rolled, jerking up and down in haphazard movements as it sunk lower towards the city streets. 

The medevac helicopter’s rotor blades clipped the side of an office building and broke off in uneven sections, digging themselves into the metal and glass façade of the structure and shooting shrapnel into the inner offices. The helicopter had now lost most of its ability to stay in the air and quickly plummeted to the city streets. Zayn was just able to see the fireball in the distance, blocks and blocks away, and heard the boom of the explosion a moment later. 

Zayn had seen enough, and ran home to be with his family. But when he reached his block he found it empty, devoid of any pedestrians or moving cars. The front end of an army lorry – when the hell did the Army get here? – was wrapped around a tree, and brass shell casings littered the road outside his home. A few small shapes lay spread eagled on the pavement, and Zayn hesitantly walked up to them. 

Only yesterday he would have rather died than allow anyone to see him not acting tough and threatening to hurt somebody, but the façade of a rebellious youth seemed to be the least important thing on his mind right now. 

To his relief, the crumpled bodies were not of his family, or anyone that he knew from the neighborhood, though the variety of the corpses struck him. One was a man in a clean-cut suit, another appeared to be a young college girl, and yet another looked like a utility worker. 

But when Zayn entered his house, it was empty. 

“Mum?” 

There was no answer from the kitchen or the living room, and Zayn wheeled back around to climb the staircase next to the front door. As he passed the front door, Zayn saw marks on it that he hadn’t noticed before when he came in. Kneeling down, he looked closely to see that the outline of a boot print was streaked into the wood, and the scratches on the paneling near the latch meant that the door must have been kicked in. 

Now thoroughly in a panic, Zayn sprinted upstairs, taking the steps two at a time until he reached the top and rushed to his bedroom. It was empty, but the door had been rammed inward and his bed flipped onto its side, almost as if someone had been searching under there. 

Next on Zayn’s list were his sisters’ rooms. Their doors were open as well, and the contents of the closets in each room had been ripped aside to reveal every nook and cranny at the back of the spaces. Someone definitely had been searching in here. 

The bathroom door was knocked off of one of its hinges, and the frosted glass shower door had been shattered, the little irregular diamonds of the pane lying all over the floor. 

The only room left was his parents’ room. Zayn slowly walked down the hall, his hand outstretched towards the dull brass knob. Dare he continue? His heart raced with the trepidation of what he would find in there, of what he _might_ find in there. His chocolate eyes ran over the gouges in the door, taking in the creases in the white paint that were rectangular with rounded edges. Instantly, Zayn knew the imprints were left from the stock of a rifle – he didn’t know how he knew, but he just _knew_. The wood panel must have almost split in two before the latch gave way, though the battered portal had swung shut at a later point. 

Zayn was aware of the sound of an engine in the street, and he listened to the heavy diesel roar fade into the distance. 

With a final breath as his fingers turned the cold metal, Zayn wrenched the door inwards to find – nothing. The bedroom was empty, with the bed knocked aside and the dresser tipped sideways onto the floor. 

Zayn lost it. 

“Mum? Dad? MUM?!” 

Hyperventilating, Zayn ran back out into the street and headed down the block, looking for any signs of life. A city transit bus sat in the center of the road, its rear end smoldering, and its shattered windows were streaked with bloody handprints and dark red lines of congealing liquid. The bus had long lines of ragged holes punched through it, as if it had been shot up with a very large machine gun. 

Zayn was about to move off in search of somebody that could help him when he realized that he needed supplies to take with him, since he wasn’t staying around here. He ran back inside the house, grabbing a duffel bag and filling it with a few jumpers, random clothes, any identification cards he had (he had never bothered getting a passport, since he never left the country), and a few sketchpads and drawing utensils, of course, since their mere presence comforted him. He cast one last look about the house, his gaze lingering on a few family photos on the wall, before slinging his bag onto his shoulder and jogging off down the street. 

The sunlight was fading fast, but Zayn could still hear the civil defence sirens sounding in the distance, as well as the occasional police klaxon echoing off of the cold flagstones and empty buildings. 

A louder howling noise gradually faded into the shriek of jet engines, and Zayn halted his running to look up, seeing two planes at a somewhat low altitude overhead. One aircraft was a large passenger airliner, about the size of an Airbus, and the other had the much smaller, narrower silhouette of a military air defense fighter. He recognized the shape from one of the airshows he went to as a child at an RAF base; it was called something like a Typhoon or a Cyclone. 

The airliner, on the other hand, seemed to be decked out in the red, white, and blue paint scheme of British Airways, as far as Zayn could tell. The British Airways plane seemed to be fighting for altitude, its nose pitched upwards at a steep rate, and the close proximity of the Typhoon fighter almost made it seem like it was helping the airliner up into the sky that was streaked with gold rays of the sunset, red glow from the many fires in the area, and black smoke that lazily curled upwards until it was dissipated by the wind. 

But then the Typhoon dropped back, and Zayn watched a thin white line seemingly sprout off of its wing and head directly at the airliner, while the fighter aircraft peeled away towards one side. With a flash that made Zayn squint his eyes, the missile connected just behind the wing of the airliner and blew it in half. 

The British Airways flight plummeted towards Bradford’s streets, one half landing in the direction of Centenary Square and the other spiraling in a lazy circle towards Little Germany, trailing a comet’s tail of fire as it landed behind some buildings. Zayn recoiled and put one hand over his eyes as the entire neighborhood in which he had seen it pass over erupted into long lines of fire and smoke, the flash of the combusting jet fuel burning his retinas and the percussive bang of the explosion thudding heavily in his chest. The flames reminded Zayn of the napalm used in the American war movies about Vietnam, and the smell of acrid smoke soon drifted to all corners of the city, curtains of fire slowly following behind it due to the recently-caused absence of a functioning fire service. 

Zayn broke out of his stupor and kept running, leaping over a body that lay on the sidewalk (he forced his eyes not to look down at it, for fear of what he would see) and ducking underneath some fallen streetlamps before turning a corner. He heard cries and strange screeching from alleyways and inside buildings, but he dared not wait around to see what was causing them. Zayn’s lungs burned with the exertion of running, and he was barely able to force himself to continue on through the abandoned streets where the only witnesses to his passage were fleeing birds and squirrels, burned out or abandoned cars, and the unseeing eyes of a multitude of corpses. 

Turning a corner onto a wide boulevard, Zayn somehow found himself looking out onto Bradford City Park, or at least what he could see of it in the darkness. Entire sections of Bradford were dark, no streetlamps in sight and buildings looming in clouds of black smoke and shadows. Sections of the city off in the distance seemed to have power, the yellow glow of their lamps just visible over some rooftops and through the haze of burning buildings. 

Stumbling around in the dark, Zayn felt his feet nudge into bumpy shapes on the ground that were soft but unyielding, and he shuffled his feet around them as he tried to squint through the dark expanse that lay over the park. 

Without warning, the dark shadow Zayn was standing in turned into a brilliant pool of white light, and he reflexively shut his eyes as they filled up with tears from the harsh glare. Through his closed lids Zayn deduced that he was in front of a spotlight, the warmth of the light pressing into his skin with an insistent hum. 

A muffled voice rang out, sounding like it came from a speaker system or a bullhorn. 

_“Hold your arms out to your sides, parallel to the ground, and turn around slowly in a circle until I tell you to stop. Drop the bag by your feet.”_

Zayn strained to see the person that this voice of authority belonged to, but he was unable to look past the glare of the spotlight. 

_“Failure to comply with these orders will result in the use of lethal force.”_

Zayn dropped the duffel onto the ground without looking (it wasn’t like he could, his eyes were burning from the light) and hesitantly held out his arms and turned in a slow circle, stopping after one rotation. 

_“Keep turning until you are ordered to stop.”_

Normally Zayn would have challenged the voice, asking what gave the prick the right to _order_ him around, but Zayn’s tough persona had long since fled his conscious state. He raised trembling arms and continued in this perverse sort of slow-motion ballerina twirl three more times, feeling like a fool with each passing turn. Finally, the voice snapped back into existence. 

_“Face the light and walk slowly towards it with your hands clasped on the top of your head, looping the straps of your bag around your wrist. If you drop your hands or start to run, you will be fired upon.”_

Zayn did as he was told, and his eyes adjusted to the glare as he walked slowly, giving him time to process what the shapes laying on the ground everywhere were – the bumps he had kept walking into in the darkness. 

They were bodies. 

Dozens and dozens, _hundreds_ of bodies lay in all sorts of twisted positions on top of each other, strewn over park benches, or blown backwards against low walls that lined the park walkways. Most bodies had scratch and bite marks somewhere on their body, and had ragged lines of holes punched in their chests and limbs; obvious indicators that the previously living people had been in the sights of someone – or many someones – with guns. 

Zayn tripped over the corpse of a little girl, and the shock made him gasp out in horror as his hands slipped from his head to cover his mouth as he felt violently sick. 

After a second, he realized that he wasn’t supposed to take his hands off of his head, and the youth glanced up with a tingle of fear towards the searchlight that continued to rest on him. 

_“It’s alright. Place your hands on your head and keep walking.”_

Then, almost as an afterthought: 

_“And watch your step.”_

Zayn continued to step slowly around the bodies, wading his way past the husks of people from all walks of life. 

He saw a man in a suit – many men in suits, actually – teenagers (that hit Zayn hard, especially as a few of the faces looked familiar from his old school), people in hospital scrubs, others in hospital patient gowns, utility workers, delivery men, paramedics, a woman in a wedding dress and what must have been her groom in a tuxedo a few dozen meters away, the odd firefighter, and police constables (the yellow-jacketed patrol kind, Zayn didn’t see any of the black-clad ARU officers among the dead). 

_What the hell is going on?_

As he got close to the searchlight, Zayn saw huddled shapes behind some sort of barricade and the outline of a few large vehicles. The searchlight flicked off and dimmer floodlights on metal poles flicked on, letting Zayn see who the mystery group was. 

Soldiers in green camouflage fatigues were kneeling behind sandbags and bits of equipment that must have been dragged in from the surrounding area. Park benches, trash bins, phone booths turned onto their side, and concrete traffic barriers were all thrown into a haphazard line that stretched across the park. 

All of the soldiers were staring at Zayn down the barrels of their rifles and heavy machine guns, and Zayn heard the voice again. 

_“Have you recently felt sick?”_

“Wh-what?” 

_“Have you felt sick at any point in the past few days?”_ The voice sounded urgent. 

“No. No, I haven’t.” 

_“Have you been in close contact with any infected individuals?”_

“Infected – what the bloody hell are you talking about?” 

Zayn had seen the news broadcasts about the virus that was showing up around the country, but it didn’t seem that important to him at the time. 

_“Answer the question!”_

“No! No, I don’t think I have!” 

A pause, then – 

_“Kneel down and keep your hands on your head.”_

Zayn bent down to the pavement, keeping his fingers tangled in his hair. 

A few soldiers came out from behind the barricades, one of them sporting an armband with a red cross and a strange electronic tablet thing, almost like a battle-ready iPad. 

The medic (that’s what Zayn guessed he was) came up slowly to Zayn, a pistol in one hand and the tablet in the other. He had a gas mask with a clear visor on, and he eyed Zayn warily as he approached. Three soldiers, also in gas masks (though two of them had masks with circular eyehole visors, one for each eye) stood on either side of Zayn, holding rifles a few inches from his head as the medic bent down. 

With a low hum, a purplish-white light was emitted from the top of the tablet and the medic ran it over Zayn’s entire body, stepping around him in a circle to cover every inch. He then holstered his pistol, gave Zayn one more wary glance, and grabbed his chin with a hand encased in a thick black glove. Zayn let his jaw be pulled down, and the medic stuck a small wand-thingy that was attached to the tablet with a wire into the boy’s mouth. 

He had an idea that whatever this test was, he very much wanted to pass it, and it didn’t take much imagination to know what would happen if he failed it. 

Zayn heard the hum again, and he saw the light at the bottom edge of his vision as it glowed out of his mouth. The wand was pushed back further, and he gagged as it hit the back of his mouth and went down his throat a little bit. Then the medic yanked the wand out of his mouth and held it up in front of his eyes, making the strangely colored light blind Zayn for once more as it hovered over each eye. 

The light was switched off, and the medic abruptly stood up, gazing with what Zayn thought was satisfaction at the tablet’s screen. He turned towards the barricade and held a thumb up before turning back to the soldiers still keeping their guns trained on Zayn’s head. 

“He’s clear.” 

Now that the medic said this, the soldiers seemed to be a lot friendlier than before, and they ushered Zayn behind the barricades towards a small group of parked vehicles. Military jeeps and trucks were parked close together while small armored vehicles with automatic turrets rolled back and forth, and Zayn spotted a few police vans and patrol cars off to one side, arranged in a much smaller circle and bumper-to-bumper. The circled cars made Zayn think (again) of the movies from America, this time about the Wild West movies where cowboys put their wagons in a circle to fight off Indians. 

Zayn was led to a group of military officers standing outside an armored vehicle with many antennas sticking out of the roof, and he guessed it was some sort of command vehicle. A man with a gold star on the shoulder boards of his fatigues looked up at Zayn’s arrival, and he strode over. 

“Ah, we have another live one, then? He’s all checked out – clean and everything?” 

The medic nodded. “Yes sir. Negative on all of the tests.” 

The general (Zayn guessed) held out a hand in a rather pompous manner, and Zayn shook it. 

“Hello! I’m General Hornby - it's good to see that some civilians can take care of themselves! How many did you take out, lad?” 

Zayn gazed at him stupidly. “Take out?” 

“Put down, beat back, you know. How many did you fight off?” 

Zayn just continued to stare at the officer, and the general realized Zayn was utterly clueless as to what he meant. 

“You mean to tell me you don’t know?” 

“Don’t know what?” 

“About the virus!” 

“Well, I know there’s an outbreak, but the telly and the radio weren’t exactly clear as to what was happening.” 

The general nodded. “Right. They have some sort of emergency broadcast going out, I assume, that’s telling you all to stay indoors?” 

Zayn nodded. 

“Aha. Not exactly a plan without merit, but it won’t do in the long run, the fools. Anyway, this virus has hit much of the country, as I’m sure you know.” 

“Yes, I do.” _This guy is a pretentious asshole…_

“Good. However, it has varying effects across the country. In the south of England, people are behaving rather… strangely, and we’re getting all sorts of conflicted reports about this and that. In the north, up to Scotland, people just catch this sickness and drop dead. Right on the spot, as if you’d shot them through the head.” 

Zayn instinctively looked outside the barricades, where the mountains of bodies lay. 

The general followed his gaze. 

“Aha. And you’re wondering why this-” He gestured to the fortifications and the groups of soldiers –“is necessary. Well, in the area around Bradford, it makes people into raving lunatics. They lose all sense of reason, all memories of loved ones, all sense of pain and other emotions – besides rage, perhaps – and just start killing. They bash in heads, stalk fleeing victims, attack police convoys, wreak havoc in the hospitals – we had to firebomb the downtown Mercy Hospital, it was a nightmare – and generally behave very unruly. The only way to stop them from killing you is to kill them first.” 

A sniper on top of the barricades fired his rifle as if to punctuate the general’s sentence, and Zayn heard a faint “Got ‘im!” from an officer with binoculars. 

“How many people…” Zayn thought of his family and where they might be. Were they among the dead? 

“Got sick? I haven’t the foggiest, but it’s a damn lot. More than half the population; some of the public health officials are putting out figures like seventy-five percent. It’s all over the country, but it’s only confined to the UK, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales at this point. The French Navy has quarantined the English Channel while any of our surviving Royal Navy comrades take care of the coast line elsewhere, with help from the Yanks – the Yanks have been throwing everything they have in the area into the fray, bless them – while the French and the RAF are shooting down any planes that may carry the virus elsewhere.” 

Zayn recalled the airliner he saw shot down earlier, bits of the puzzle falling into place as he listened. 

“But the virus is barely being contained. The World Health Organization is in a panic over its rate of transmission, and the UN is holding plenty of meetings in New York. On that note, the Yanks have thrown up a damn wall of their navy and their air force across the Atlantic, and I’m fairly certain they have all of their H-bombs on standby to blow the virus to kingdom come, and us along with it, should it come to it. The American embassy in London was evacuated with helicopters like bloody Saigon, and a bunch of poor sods tried to get out of the country through the American airbases near London. And… well, a crowd of people breached the gates at RAF Lakenheath, and the American military police started shooting everybody to contain them. The Yanks fell back to their inner defensive lines and firebombed the outer fence line – funnily enough, we didn’t even think they _had_ napalm stored there – and made it quite clear that both of our governments weren’t going to put up with that nonsense. The smell around there is positively dreadful, but they think that the base may have been overrun by now.” 

Another gunshot rang out, and the general gestured for Zayn to sit down on top of an ammunition crate. 

“Anyway, the infection got its way onto a few Royal Navy ships and an American destroyer at one of the coastal bases, and that whole area dissolved into some panicked mess of everybody quarantining each other and blowing the shite out of everything. A second Yank destroyer at the base tried to block an infected Royal Navy cruiser from leaving and breaching the quarantine, but our bloke blew him in half – just like that – and tried to sail out. The Yanks didn’t pursue the matter too much, thankfully. The coastal defense fleet hunted down our rogue chap, by the way, and quite literally incinerated him with ship-to-ship missiles.  
But yeah, that’s how it’s going everywhere else.” 

Zayn thought for a moment before looking at the pompous old soldier with pleading eyes. 

“Did they evacuate any areas to a safe zone? Around here, for instance?” 

The general nodded. “Of course! We have a helicopter flying in here to pick you up and take you to a safe zone. Most of the camps are being constructed in the areas up north – Scotland and the like – where there were less people when the virus hit. You’re the only survivor we’ve seen in an hour, hence the whole medical check we had to do. We dropped into the park by helicopter because we received word that the Bradford Constabulary was holding out here. We helped clean up the area, established a perimeter, and let the crazies come to us.” 

The general pointed to the circle of police vehicles, which explained the way they were configured. The cops were the cowboys, and the ‘crazies’ were the Indians. Zayn saw a few ARU squads and a few dozen patrol officers in yellow jackets lounging around the cars, telling their story to the soldiers that were listening with rapt attention as the cops detailed their heroic stand in the park. 

Zayn twisted back to the general. “My parents – I went home and they weren’t there.” 

The general frowned and thought for a moment. “What shape was the house in?” 

“There was a crashed army lorry outside, the door was kicked in, and the bedrooms all had been searched, especially my parents’ bedroom. Their door was smashed inwards with a rifle – at least, that’s what it looked like.” 

“Was there any blood or shell casings?” 

“No.” Thank god for that. 

“Well, there’s a chance – a chance, mind you – that a military unit went through there and forced them to evacuate. They probably wanted to stay and wait for you, and the chaps didn’t let them.” The general gave an apologetic shrug. “But they might have been… you know.” 

Zayn swallowed the sour taste in his mouth and nodded. 

“However, when you get to a safe zone camp, there is a system being established to reunite separated family members based on a database; based by name and hometown, whatnot.” 

The low rumble of a helicopter was heard in the distance, and the general looked towards the sky. 

“This must be your ride, young man. Say, what is your name? How rude of me not to ask.” 

“Zayn. Zayn Malik.” 

The helicopter appeared overhead, the roundel of the British armed forces visible on the olive-green fuselage as it descended. 

The general called to him over the rotor wash that sent loose items cartwheeling about, bellowing to make his voice heard. 

“Good luck Zayn! I do hope you find your family safe and sound, young man!” 

“Thanks! Thanks for not shooting me, you know!” 

The general laughed heartily. “My pleasure, good sir! Godspeed!” 

Zayn climbed into the helicopter and relinquished his duffel bag into the arms of a crewman, hearing an officer call out something to the general as he was buckled into a jump seat by the crew chief. As the helicopter lifted off, Zayn watched the amassed armored vehicles and soldiers fire with heavy weapons into an approaching group of figures just before the aircraft banked away. 

Zayn gave the devastated and smoldering landscape of Bradford a silent farewell, while the crew chief gave him a look of understanding and crouched on the opposite side of the cabin to look out on the city alongside Zayn. He was uncertain of where his new home would be, and prayed – actually prayed, for the first time in a very long time – that his parents and sisters were alive and safe somewhere behind a multitude of walls and soldiers. If they weren’t… well, could you even call someplace home if your loved ones weren’t there? 

*********

**SATURDAY THE 6 TH – 0052 HOURS **

**LONDON, ENGLAND – QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE ZERO [BUCKINGHAM PALACE, ST. JAMES PALACE, AND THE MALL]**

**_LIAM JAMES PAYNE, LANCE CPL., REGULAR ARMY ID#4862LP -- AGE: 21 -- OCCUPATION: SOLDIER (FOOT GUARD, COLDSTREAM REGIMENT) -- DX23 HEALTH STATUS: UNINFECTED, INOCULATED WITH EXPERIMENTAL DX23 VACCINE AS PER MINISTRY OF DEFENCE ORDER 729467_ **

Lance Corporal Liam Payne of 7 th Company, 1st Battalion of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Foot Guards Regiment stood at post outside of St. James Palace, tucked into the sentry box against the slightly cold, not-quite-yet-spring wind that whirled down the street. 

A police van drove by quickly, its blue lights flashing and the loudspeaker mounted on its roof droning the same announcement Liam had heard for the past three hours. 

_“This sector is under curfew. Any civilian on the streets will be detained for an indefinite period. Attempts to escape authorities or disregard official orders will result in the use of lethal force. All police in the city of London are now carrying firearms, and any attempts to assault them will be dealt with appropriately. Remain indoors and remain calm. An official broadcast will be made in the morning when the curfew is lifted.”_

Normally, a guardsman would be at post for a few hours before being relieved, but the recent emergency across the nation meant that more men were being posted around the city at buildings they normally didn’t guard, and that more guards were being assigned to each important building. Police were also supplementing the Foot Guards of the Household Division – there were five of them: the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards, the Irish Guards, and the Welsh Guards comprised the original five regiments of Foot Guards. However, the Ministry of Defence created a sixth regiment in recent years from the Territorial Army, called the London Regiment – Liam and his fellow guardsmen typically scoffed at them, since they weren’t technically _real_ Guards – which also took on guard duties at important buildings around London. 

[There is also a regiment of guards on horseback called the Life Guards, but now is not the time to delve into their organization.] 

But right now, Liam was concerned with his posting, and looked at his watch. Ten minutes had passed, so – as he did every ten minutes – Liam stepped out of the sentry box, wheeled to the right in a quarter-turn and marched down the sidewalk outside the palace. His shined boots smacked firmly onto the pavement as he marched, leaving an echo from his hard soles that bounced off of the surrounding flagstones. Liam gripped his L85 assault rifle, complete with shiny bayonet, firmly to his shoulder with his white dress gloves as he moved down to the corner of the palace. 

As he reached the corner, another guard wearing the same grey overcoat as Liam appeared (the famous red tunics were only worn in the warmer weather when it wasn’t cold and threatening to rain, like it was now), and the two nodded to each other before half-turning and going back the same way they had come. A gust of wind threatened to pull Liam’s bearskin shako off of his head, and he adjusted it with his hand so quickly that an observer would have missed it if they blinked, an ability gained from many previous postings. 

Liam passed his sentry box and went to the other end of the palace, meeting the guard on that perpendicular side at the same time and exchanging a silent greeting. 

For some reason (bureaucrats and military brass always cocked things up) no additional police had been assigned to the exterior of St. James Palace, having been sent elsewhere in the slowly worsening city, so the four guardsmen that were there currently were “it” to say the least. The streets were deserted thanks to the curfew, so at least Liam didn’t have to deal with gawking tourists or drunken sods staggering out of the bars annoying the shite out of him. 

It was nearly one in the morning, and Liam was close – like, _really_ close – to being relieved and able to catch a few hours of sleep in the regimental barracks, and he scanned the street to spot any sign of the next shift. 

There wasn’t a bearskin shako in sight, though Liam did suddenly catch glimpse of something in the shadows between two buildings down the street. Deciding the current situation warranted a slight break in protocol, the lance corporal called out to the shadow. 

“There’s a curfew on, you know! I’d get back inside before the plods show up.” 

The shadow dissolved into the surrounding darkness, and Liam quickly forgot about it in his mental haste to be relieved. After another ten minutes had passed, Liam grunted and stepped back out into the wind, making sure the white belt that secured the grey overcoat to his torso was firmly in place against the gusts. Where the hell was his relief? 

The trip to the right side of the palace was uneventful, and Liam was perfectly timed to that side’s sentry’s arrival at the corner as well. 

Wheeling left, Liam walked back down past his sentry box, listening to police sirens in the distance and a popping sound he recognized as gunshots. 

_Some poor sod tried to run, didn’t he?_ Liam thought to himself, as his eyes caught sight of something across the street and he twisted his head to look. 

Some bloke was staggering towards him across the lanes, and Liam cursed himself for jinxing his luck with drunks for the night. This bastard had gotten so smashed that he didn’t even realize he wasn’t allowed out on the streets this late. 

Liam braced himself for confrontation as the man came onto the sidewalk about fifteen yards away and stumbled towards him. As he got closer, Liam brought his rifle to ready arms and called out the traditional challenge used by the guards against stupid tourists and the like. 

“Make way for the Queen’s Guard!” 

The man didn’t alter his path, and Liam yelled out the order again. 

“Make way for the Queen’s Guard!” _Idiot_ was the unsaid part, and although other Guards would have probably called the man worse things, Liam was too tired to really think of something creative to say. 

The man was almost upon Liam, and the lance corporal wrinkled his nose at the smell coming off of the figure. God, he had to be homeless or something, because he smelled _awful_. 

Drunk or not, Liam had to clear him from his way, so he checked the man with his L85 and pushed him backwards. The man’s foot caught on the curb and he fell backwards, letting out a low moan as he hit the ground. He eyed that man for a few moments and watched him fail miserably to get up, then turned back around and marched towards his sentry box. If the man was still lying on the ground when he turned around, Liam decided he would assist the bloke and call an ambulance if necessary (which it really shouldn’t be), but he was currently hoping his sergeant and his relief would get here right about now. 

But as he marched, Liam became aware of a shuffling noise behind him. When the sound was almost upon him, Liam wheeled around to find himself staring at the same figure, and briefly wondered how drunk or stupid the man had to be to keep pestering him like this – during a state of curfew, of all things! 

The man outstretched his arm as if wanting a hug and wheezed as he came towards Liam, trying to wrap his arms around the soldier’s neck and snapping his teeth like a deranged dog. The Coldstream Guard shoved him back again with the rifle, backpedaling with wide eyes and holding the rifle outwards, its bayonet gleaming in the moonlight. 

“Get back or I will use force!” 

The man acted as if Liam had said nothing, and continued his stumbling advance towards the sentry. Liam muttered a quick prayer and thrust forwards with the bayonet, now realizing that something was very, very wrong. The trained guardsman precisely calculated the path of the bayonet to be _just_ close enough to the bloke to frighten him into retreating, but the swish of the blade had no effect on this man. He just kept walking forwards towards Liam, who was thoroughly troubled by the current turn of events, and that was an unacceptable situation to him. 

Liam sucked in a breath, turned his weapon around, and bashed the stock of the firearm into the man’s sternum as hard as he could – and Liam could hit extremely hard if had to; the Army didn’t offer recreational boxing for laughs. The normally attitude-adjusting and spirit-crushing blow would have knocked the air out of any normal man and caused enough pain to stop an assailant, but this psycho only staggered back a foot and continued to come towards Liam while groaning loudly. 

“I will fire upon you if you continue your assault!” 

The cold side of the sentry box pressed into Liam’s back, and he realized he had nowhere left to retreat to as the man got closer. He yelled in the hopes that one of his fellow guards would hear him, but the wind was blowing too hard and probably muffled any sounds he made. 

“I need some support over here!” 

With no response coming back to him Liam bristled under his bearskin hat, drumming his white-gloved fingers on the rifle and looking down at it. 

No Coldstream Guard would lose ground to a drunken lunatic. 

“I have been authorized to use lethal force, sir! Stand back!” 

The shite kept coming; his dull eyes pointed out of focus in Liam’s general direction. 

“This is your last warning, I swear to God I’ll f-fucking shoot you!” 

Liam yanked back on the charging handle, disengaged the safety, brought the rifle’s sights up to his eye, and took a deep breath – trying to see a way out of this with the new engagement rules they had received a few days ago – before pulling the trigger twice. The report of the discharges echoed through the street before being taken away by the cold gusts of wind. 

The sentries on the other sides of St. James Palace heard the gunfire and collectively swore, readying their own rifles and running towards Liam’s post, their polished boots slapping on the pavement. 

But no one swore as loudly as Liam, who stared in horror at the sight before him. Thick globs of dark slime oozed out of the two ragged holes in the man’s chest, but he was still standing. The bullets had knocked him back a foot, but he resumed his slow advance on the now thoroughly perturbed guardsman, who kept blinking in an attempt to change the sight in front of his wide brown eyes. 

Liam had heard the whispers, the rumors and wild tales that were floating around the city over the past few days, but he dismissed them as the standard bullshit cops and soldiers told each other. Tales of people not being hurt by things that would normally kill a man, eyewitness accounts from constables that had to shoot a petite woman dozens of times to bring her down; they all seemed far-fetched to the Wolverhampton lad. 

But there was one way to find out; Liam remembered the words a strange Army official (that no one had seen before at the barracks) had told them in a briefing a few nights ago. 

_Gentlemen, you have been trained to shoot in the center of all your targets for your entire service careers. You will now disregard that, and aim primarily for the head._

Liam breathed out, raised the L85 to his shoulder again, and yanked back on the trigger. The man’s head exploded from the 5.56x45mm NATO round, and he dropped to the pavement like a puppet with severed strings. 

The three other guardsmen arrived on the scene, looking from Liam to the body, which had black stuff oozing out onto the pavement around it. 

“It’s true,” he breathed to them. “It’s true.” 

*********

**CENTRAL GOVERNMENT WAR HEADQUARTERS BUNKER SITE “LION”, OUTSKIRTS OF LONDON – LOCATED IN QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE 17**

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was hunched over the electronic map of the country that glowed from a tabletop display, different sections of it outlined into quarantine sectors and their subsequent zones. 

“Has it reached Northern Ireland, or are they safe there?” 

A general from the Army’s Special Warfare Directorate consulted a computer screen. 

“It has, Prime Minster. There are reports of the DX23 strain having Type One, Two, and Three effects on the local population, and the units we’ve sent over there are having a hard time containing it.” 

“Damn. Alright, give me the distribution of the types of affliction country-wide.” 

The Deputy Minister of Defence (the Minister of Defence was in a bunker in Cheshire – much of the government was now spread throughout the country, as per Continuity of Government plans) was tossed a handful of papers by an adjutant. He adjusted his glasses and read off of the sheets of hastily compiled data to the Prime Minister, his voice droning off of the bunker’s concrete walls. 

“Type Three effects have been observed in Scotland from the Isles of Orkney down to the Grampian Mountains with isolated pockets of Type Twos and Ones. There’s a rumor of an area with Type Two infections near Leeds, but the Territorial Army units we’ve sent to that area haven’t reported back in. Type Three effects are also being observed farther south from the Central Lowlands right to the southern coast. Type Ones aren’t really located in any specific area, sir, though a narrow strip of Ones _does_ exist in the northern end of Ireland. Ireland-Ireland, not Northern Ireland.” 

“What about Type Twos and Threes in England and Wales? Those are the ones I’m worried about.” 

“Threes seem to take prevalence across the entire isle, though they are occurring with less frequency in Northern Scotland – we’re not sure if it’s a lesser population density, the climate, or something else, but that is why the Civil Defence officials are sending all evacuations north. Type Twos are highly mobile and much more aggressive as well as stealthy, often stalking their victims until they let their guard down and are vulnerable to attack, according to conflicting reports – in several areas, no one can keep themselves alive long enough to tell our chaps in Communications what is actually going on, but we’re working on that. London, incidentally, is completely Type Three, but we’ve managed to contain it to the outer areas away from the evacuation centers, King’s Cross, and The Mall. It’s being well hidden from the public for now and we’re focusing on orderly evacuations, _but_ the Territorial Army commanders, the police commissioner, and the Guards commanders all say the Threes will be crawling out of the woodwork – and the morgues and hospitals, I’m afraid – by tomorrow evening, at their best estimates.” 

He looked up. 

“Their worst estimates only give us until noon, and even those may be optimistic according to some Ministry of Defence Police officers that are conducting _cleaning operations_ at some London hospitals.” 

The Prime Minister sighed. “Great. We need to make sure those evacuation corridors stay open. Has the Irish government accepted our repeated offers of assistance?” 

“They still think their army and the _Garda_ can hold their own, but the Defence Minister took the liberty of marshaling our units in Northern Ireland to cross over the border when they inevitably, so I’m told, are overrun by the swarms.” 

“Very well. But let’s keep working on getting their permission first, I don’t want to have to deal with a war at the same time as we fight this infection.” 

“Yes sir.” 


	2. "Accidents & Emergencies"

**FRIDAY THE 5 TH – 2247 HOURS** ****

****

**LONDON**

****

Louis Tomlinson walked the hallways of Central Middlesex Hospital with his instructor, a middle-aged nurse named Carrie. She was in charge of educating Louis and several other classmates of his in hands-on medical procedures that they, as nursing students, would be expected to perform once that they had graduated. Louis was one of the last few people from the class left in the hospital tonight, as most wanted to get home to sleep, eat, or otherwise unwind after a long week of some hands-on trauma. 

“That was good though, Louis, wasn’t it? You did the IV line marvelously.” Carrie practically beamed at him, and Louis shrugged off her praise with a little embarrassment. 

“It was nothing. That’s, like, first-year stuff.” 

“The basics are the most important things in medicine, love. Never forget that.” 

Two more people joined them in their stroll: Ian Pearce, another one of Louis’ classmates, and Dr. Beathan, who Ian had been with for the past hour. 

Dr. Beathan walked next to Carrie, speaking lowly. 

“A new patient from the Emergency Department is acting strangely. He was admitted with severe lacerations and what appeared to be animal bites on his arms and legs, he also has a terribly high fever and some nausea. His situation has deteriorated over the past several hours, and we’ve lost his pulse altogether several times. He’s become delirious and combative, and we’ve had to put him in restraints for his safety. It took several of us, Ian and myself included, to actually make sure he stayed in the bed.” 

Ian, who was walking with Louis, turned and muttered to him. 

“The bloke was stark mad. He actually _nicked_ me, see? Chomped right on my hand.” 

The red-haired youth held his right hand out to Louis, showing a small bandage just below his pinky with some light red stains of blood around the edges. 

“I’ve never seen someone that out of it. I’m okay though; no harm done.” 

He grinned, showing off his almost straight white teeth that complimented the freckles on his face beautifully. Louis made a sympathetic noise and brushed his fingers against Ian’s hand. Louis would be hesitant to say that Ian and him were together, but they weren’t _strictly_ friends, either. 

Friends certainly didn’t get intimate with you in the supply closet, for one thing. 

All Louis knew was that Ian made him happy, and whatever they were only beginning to be for each other was enough for him. 

Dr. Beathan was still droning on, his glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose as he gesticulated. 

“We have six patients with similar or identical symptoms, and there were two additional A &E patients that were deceased before we could stabilize them. They’re in the morgue now. I’m not sure what to do next, because nothing conventional seems to be working.” 

The group split in two around a moaning man on a gurney being pushed by paramedics down the hallway, Carrie hurrying to catch back up to Dr. Beathan as Louis and Ian trailed a meter behind them. 

“Well, what does Doctor Kensal think about it?” 

Dr. Beathan snorted in exasperation. “I wish I knew! He took the second deceased down to the morgue an hour ago, but no one has seen him since. I can’t get down to the morgue anyway; Security shut the elevator off and they have the stairs going down to there blocked because of some accident. I’ll have to look for him later.” 

“I’ll keep an eye out.” 

Carrie turned to Louis and Ian. “You two look exhausted. It’s been a long day; go home and get some rest. And I do mean _rest_ ,” she said with a meaningful glance between the two of them. 

They both blushed and said goodnight to the two adults, making their way out of the main hallway and into a small cafeteria for staff members. It was mostly empty save for a few tables of conferring doctors in bloodstained scrubs and another table with a police constable and a paramedic. Everyone was speaking in hushed tones, looking around repeatedly at the other occupants of the room. Louis went and grabbed two muffins from the food line and went back to the table in the corner Ian had sat down at. His crooked smile actually seemed duller than the sparkles visible in his blue eyes, and Louis held their gaze for a moment before rolling the shrink-wrapped muffin to him. 

“How did she know…?” Ian said slowly. Louis laughed and bit into his own blueberry muffin, shrugging the observation off. 

“Must be her motherly intuition. So, how was your day? Besides getting bit, I mean.” 

Ian smiled. “Not too bad. I assisted Doctor Beathan with some things and had the most _adorable_ little girl with a broken wrist. She reminded me of your sisters.” 

Louis smiled and took Ian’s (uninjured) hand in his, rubbing his fingers over the boy’s knuckles gently. 

“They love you. Lottie keeps demanding me to bring you to visit again.” 

Ian chuckled, trying not to lose a mouthful of muffin. “Talk to your mum; ask her if we can come over next holiday.” 

“I will. Does that hurt?” Louis asked with a wave towards the bandage. 

“It’s starting to throb a little; I’m going to have someone that’s free look at it. Why don’t you head home? I’ll see you in class on Monday.” 

Louis pouted as they stood up and walked out towards the street side doors next to the Accident and Emergency Department. 

“Aw, you won’t come around tomorrow?” 

“Can’t. It’s Amy’s birthday.” 

“Oh, right.” Louis said with faux-irritation. 

“Oh, come off it. You know she’s missing a few certain _things_ for me to be remotely interested in her.” 

“Three, in fact.” 

“Exactly. Run along, I’ll see you on Monday.” 

Louis gave him a surprise kiss on the cheek and walked off through the doors, passing a few police officers walking inside and heading out to the Underground to get back to his apartment. 

Ian walked to the left into the A &E, trying to see if any of the doctors on duty were free to look at the swelling cut on his hand. By doing so, he failed to notice that the police walking inside past him had small pistols in holsters on their hips. 

Every doctor and nurse he passed was busy with patients, so Ian headed towards the doors to see if any paramedics were hanging around before going back out onto the streets. Near the doors, he was approached by a police officer that had been standing in a corner, surveying the room with calculating eyes. 

“Hello there. What happened to your hand?” 

Ian held out the injured extremity for a moment. “Some crazy patient bit me, that’s all. I’m just looking to get it taken care of,” he said while turning his head around, trying to find someone with the expertise to look at this stinging cut. This action took Ian’s attention off of the constable, which otherwise prevented him from noticing that the insignia on the man’s uniform was for the Ministry of Defence Police, not the Metropolitan Police Service, and that he had a black pistol in a holster on his side, and that his eyes weren’t leaving the wound on Ian’s hand. 

“I saw a few paramedics in the loading bay that could probably help you out. I’ll walk you.” 

“Thanks, that’d be great.” 

Ian walked next to the constable down the corridor to a set of double doors that opened out into a small, enclosed loading bay that was normally used for ambulances when there was an overflow out front as well as a few deliveries. Sure enough, two yellow and green ambulances were parked side by side in the bay, with their crews sitting behind them in various stages of exhaustion. Ian actually recognized one of the medics from frequent run-ins in the hospital, and he waved at the man. The medic’s hair reminded him of Louis’, and Ian supposed that was why he liked the man so much. 

“I’m dreadfully sorry about this.” 

“Wh-” 

The MOD constable was walking a few steps behind Ian when he drew his SIG Sauer 229 pistol, leveling the sidearm at the back of the lad’s head and pulling the trigger with precisely 10 pounds of pressure, sending a bullet through the student’s skull without hesitation. 

Ian Pearce’s corpse dropped with a sickening thud onto the concrete apron of the loading bay, thick streams of blood running through the red locks of hair on what was left of his shattered head. The paramedics stood up, put on latex gloves and carried the limp body out into an enclosed section of the hospital’s rear parking lot. With a single sign of the cross from a Catholic paramedic, the redhead was dumped hastily onto a smoldering bonfire placed in a bricked-in section where dumpsters were usually located, behind a gate that prevented anyone from wandering back there. Beneath his husk were two dead patients, the mauled bodies of two morgue attendants, a bitten orderly, and Dr. Kensal. 

Louis Tomlinson never saw his lover that next Monday. But the epidemic was already taking hold by then.

*********

**MONDAY THE 8 TH \- 1123 HOURS**

**QUARANTINE SECTOR JULIET, ZONE 8 – HOLMES CHAPEL, CHESHIRE EAST, COUNTY OF CHESHIRE**

Harry had slept in that morning, having stayed up late on Sunday night at his friend Sam’s house watching a movie. They had tried to watch television but every program kept getting interrupted with stupid news reports about some sort of violent riots that were happening in parts of the country, so they turned on Sam’s Xbox and watched a DVD of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy instead. He hadn’t gotten home until two in the morning – Sam having driven him back in a beat-up Volkswagen – and had slumbered soundly until eleven, waking up to the sun shining through his window behind a grey haze of clouds. Harry hurried to get up, since his mother always hated it when he slept late while on holiday and complained that he was wasting his day away. He pulled a shirt of an indie band that he liked called White Eskimo over his head and tugged on a pair of jeans with some minor difficulty, nearly tripping into the side of his desk as he hopped on one foot to untangle his other foot from the cuff. 

Harry opened his bedroom door and walked to the staircase, sticking his head downstairs to see if his mum had left any food out for him but finding that the table in the living room where she normally left a plate of nourishment was empty. 

“Mum?” 

Harry didn’t get a response, but he saw that her handbag was lying on its side in the middle of the front entryway and put it back on the side table. She never went anywhere without it, therefore she had to be home. 

“Mum, are you there?” She didn’t answer him, so Harry guessed she may have gone out into the garden for something and would be inside shortly. He went back upstairs, deciding to take a shower while he had the chance of being free from admonishment from Anne. The door to the hallway closet squeaked on its hinges when he pulled it open to get a towel, and he slammed it shut forcefully since the latch sometimes stuck. The wooden door clattered a little and the sound echoed throughout the silent house as Harry went into the bathroom, hanging the towel up on a hook next to the shower and turning the knob for hot water on. 

He made sure to close the bathroom door and lock it, something he had done ever since his mother walked in on him doing… somewhat _private_ things to himself a few short years ago while he was in the shower and the beginning throes of puberty. He never wanted to have that uncomfortable experience again. 

Harry took his shower, singing at the top of his lungs for a few minutes and creating as much noise as he could while he shampooed his long curls, which were stretching under the weight of shampoo and water. Thick steam fogged up the mirror above the sink and the window behind the toilet as Harry attempted to mimic a guitar solo with his voice, somewhat succeeding in hitting the correct notes for the part he was belting out. 

He had just managed to get shampoo in his eye and was scrubbing it out vigorously, cursing the makers of whatever scented concoction that was burning his retinas, when the door to the bathroom shook under a heavy knock. 

Harry didn’t hear until the second knock, calling out over the thundering of the water against the shower walls. 

“Morning Mum, I’ll be out in a few minutes!” 

He went back to rinsing his eye out and sang some more before the bathroom door rattled again, the force behind the knock increased from beforehand. Harry sighed, guessing that his mum was annoyed at him for sleeping in late and was trying to get him moving along. 

“I’ve got some shampoo in my eye, I’ll be out in a bit!” 

This was followed by another knock that was incredibly hard, and Harry shut the water off and looked at the door with puzzlement. 

“Mum?” 

He was just about to step out of the shower and see what was so important that she couldn’t answer him (he hated it when his mum called him from another room and didn’t elaborate when he responded) when he heard the faint chime of the doorbell downstairs. The knocking stopped, and Harry listened to Anne go back down the hallway to the stairs. She must be really tired, because she barely picked her feet up off the floor as she shuffled away. 

He finished up in the shower, drying his hair partway and letting the air do the rest as he pulled his shirt back on. Harry realized that he forgot clean underwear and quickly stuck his head out into the hallway to see if the coast was clear before running to his room holding his jeans in his hands. He grabbed a pair of boxers and some socks and pulled them on, stepping into his shoes, putting his wallet and phone into his pocket and heading to the stairs, grabbing his light brown jacket from the banister on the way down. 

Harry frowned at the front door, which now stood halfway open and allowed noises from outside to filter in. He heard sirens, speeding cars, doors thudding closed, and something that sounded suspiciously like breaking glass in the distance. Just before he slammed the door shut Harry saw his neighbor’s station wagon pull away from the curb, loaded to the tops of the windows with bags and boxes of stuff and quickly disappearing at a speed far above the local limit. 

He could hear his mother banging around in the kitchen, so Harry walked down the hall to say good morning and grab something to eat from the refrigerator. 

In the second and a half Harry had to look at his mother before she turned around and changed his life forever, he noticed something was wrong with her. From behind he could see that her favorite lavender jumper was ripped in two places, her hair was disheveled and appeared to be torn out in one spot, she had a dirty and bloody wrapping on her right arm that hung from an odd angle at her side, and that something brownish red was smeared on the countertop next to her. She turned around at the sound of his entrance, listing to one side, and stared at him emptily with a face that would plague his dreams for the rest of his life. She had a deep scratch on her cheek that was clotted with blood that looked black and her eyes were hollow, and she had something smeared around her mouth that killed all the hunger Harry was feeling for breakfast. 

He screamed, screamed like a girl and would have been happy to admit it if it would change his life from the nightmare that it was now and rewind back to normal. Anne’s facial muscles contorted into a horrific grimace as she opened her mouth wide and staggered towards Harry, who immediately knew she was long gone as he stared her right in the face and realized she was no longer the woman who had raised him and loved him for nearly two decades. 

Harry suppressed the second scream of horror that threatened to tear out of his throat, backing away from the thing in the kitchen that used to be his mother and down the hall while she pursued him clumsily. When his hand felt the cold handle of the door behind his back he twisted it open and ran outside, slamming the door behind him to silence the snarls Anne made from the entryway. 

He took off running from his yard out into the street, thick acrid smoke from a fire somewhere causing him to cough violently. His eyes and lungs burning, Harry ran around the tear-blurred shapes of several not-people that stumbled towards him from wide-open front doors and abandoned cars, feeling the swish of air just near his body where their rotten hands failed to gain purchase on him. The moans of the creatures now behind him mixed with a cacophony of noises from all over; Harry could hear the harsh noise of the school’s fire alarm on the other side of town, the frantic tolling of church bells from the square, the shattering of someone’s living room window from the next block, the sound of many sirens growing and fading as police cars and ambulances sped in every direction across distant intersections, and most of all, the screams that were infrequently audible from darkened alleys, bright homes, and out on the actual street.

The small intersection just down the street from his home was deserted save for an ambulance that lay on its side in a field of shattered glass and broken metal. Flames licked at the back half of the patient bay, and Harry sprinted quickly past it so he didn’t have to look at the severed arm lying next to the windshield. The youth could see some sort of movement up the block that didn’t look jerky and horrifically imitating life, so he choked back the tears that spilled from his eyes and ran towards what could possibly be his only hope at getting out of this hell. 


	3. "Bridge on the River Dee"

****

**MONDAY THE 8 TH – 1251 HOURS**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR JULIET, ZONE 8 – HOLMES CHAPEL**

Harry ran, breathing in the harsh burn of smoke from the next street over and the putrid stench of death that permeated the air from all directions as he put distance between himself and every staggering figure that he saw. He reached an intersection on a larger road, looking in each of the three directions that the pavement branched off to. To his right was a residential street with a car parked in the middle of the lane 100 meters away, a man fiddling with something in the backseat frantically. He looked up at Harry for a moment and then turned his attention back to the interior of his car. From here Harry was able to see a bandage on the man’s forearm with a dark stain seeping into the white material, so he decided not to go that way. 

Straight ahead of him was a small house in the middle of a slightly larger road that led north to a major thoroughfare, with stands of bushes on each side of the house for quite some distance. It was the only house that bordered that street, the closest dwellings nearby being set back a few hundred meters on other streets. The house was currently on fire, and two fire brigade engines were parked in front of it, their blue lights flashing and long twisting snakes of hose lying abandoned on the ground as water dripped from the nozzles. No one was in sight, firemen or otherwise. 

The road to his left had two cars crashed into each other, their fronts twisted and mangled together. A woman lay motionless in the front seat of one car, her neck resting on the bent steering wheel at an odd angle. 

Harry could see a police car parked a short distance behind the two wrecked vehicles, the driver’s door wide open and the blue lightbar on the roof flashing spasmodically. He walked over to it, looking into the interior for any sign of a policeman or something that could help him. A radio handset sat on the front seat and issued random transmissions, a gas mask lay on the center console with a yellow reflective windbreaker draped over the passenger seat, and three or four pamphlets that looked very official were stuck into a cup holder, worn and creased like they had been opened and closed all over again. 

_“Alfa Sierra One, go to Thrawnbridge and see if you can assist Mike Three Seven, he says he’s outnumbered and low on ammunition. I’ll coordinate with the field headquarters to try to get military units over to you.”_

__

_“Lima Six Two, I’ve got more infected by the bridge. Everybody just stay away from the hospital, they’re pouring out of the A &E like ants.” _

One had the banner of the National Health Service at the top of its front page and said **_VIRAL OUTBREAK: INFORMATION FOR LOCAL AUTHORITIES/POLICE/FIRE/EMS RESPONDERS – SYMPTOMS OF INFECTION TO LOOK FOR IN AN INDIVIDUAL AND SIGNS THAT YOU MAY HAVE A LOCAL OUTBREAK._ **

_“Charlie Eight One, are you there? Eight One? Has anybody seen Eight One?”_

__

A second was from the Home Office, and its title read **_INFORMATION FOR LOCAL POLICE SERVICES AND APPROPRIATE USAGE OF FORCE ON INFECTED INDIVIDUALS, AS PER THE CURRENT STATE OF EMERGENCY AND DECLARATION OF MARTIAL LAW – FOR POLICE EXAMINATION ONLY_ ** . 

_“Jesus fucking Christ, they’re coming down the motorway slip road! Tell that military police unit to bring their armored vehicle over here right away; they’ve got minutes.”_

__

_“Control, Romeo Six Three is gone, I saw him get swarmed by those fucking things.”_

__

The third was thicker than the others, and its front page read **_MINISTRY OF DEFENCE INSTRUCTIONS TO LOCAL EMERGENCY SERVICES FOR MAINTAINING OF QUARANTINE AND COORDINATION WITH MILITARY PERSONNEL_ ** . 

_“Hello, hello? Can anybody hear me? I’m a civilian and I came across this police van. I need somebody to help me; those creatures are really fucking close nearby. Wait, the constable’s back, he’s- Oh Jesus, somebodAHHH!”_

__

_“I found Tony… it looks like he was bitten and shot himself in the head.”_

__

None of those pamphlets looked like they would help Harry, so he threw them to the side and started to back out of the car, glancing at the small cardboard box of bullets open on center console next to the data computer. 

Harry just lifted his head out of the police cruiser and turned around when stiff and bloodstained hands grabbed his shirt collar. He yelled in fright as an obviously undead police constable with dark black stuff around his mouth and dripping onto his uniform shirt lunged at him, teeth bared and snapping at the air next to Harry’s jaw. Harry fell back into the car and pushed the zombie to the side, looking right into a pair of dulled brown irises with horror. The little capillaries of the eye that would normally be red were dark black and brown and branched off in every direction through the sclera, and Harry turned his attention downward quickly to see a ragged gash in the officer’s neck. 

The undead policeman snapped his teeth again and let out a rasping moan as he struggled against Harry, who was trying to keep him as far away from his face as possible. The zombie jerked his head around, alternating between trying to bite Harry’s face and his arms, so the youth had to twist his forearms away every now and then while maintaining his resistance on the man’s body. He looked around frantically for some sort of weapon he could use to get the zombified cop off of him, and his eyes landed on the pistol in a holster on his utility belt. 

No, that wouldn’t do, since Harry didn’t know how to work a gun. He settled for the baton tucked through a loop on the belt, and shifted one arm in a sort of chokehold underneath the man’s chin in a fashion so he couldn’t get his head low enough to bite him. He pulled the baton from the belt and jammed it in the zombie’s mouth, causing him to bite down firmly on the baton and swing his arms up to try and dislodge the baton. Harry took the opportunity to kick the walking corpse hard in the knee, and the minor pain he felt in his own ankle was worth the satisfaction he got when the infected constable fell over onto the roadway. 

After trying to lower his pounding heart rate for a second, Harry realized he shouldn’t just stand there like an idiot and stare at the zombie that was struggling to get back onto its feet. Just when he looked around for that baton to see if he could get it back and use it again (how he was going to use it, he wasn’t sure) the sound of a rapidly approaching motor came from further down the left branch of the road. Turning his head, he saw a police officer on a motorbike with blue flashing LEDs rapidly driving up to him, and he saw the officer’s helmet turn towards him in surprise as he took in the sight of Harry and the zombified constable that was now unsteadily on his feet and growling as he lunged towards Harry. 

The officer on the motorcycle swerved and braked hard, causing the bike to fishtail as he turned it towards Harry’s side of the road. He skidded right up to them and stopped just in front of Harry and before his former colleague, drew a black handgun from his belt, and shot the undead officer in the forehead. The zombie dropped to the ground with a thud, and the motor officer stared at it for a moment before turning to Harry, seemingly satisfied. 

“You alright? Did he get you?” 

“No, no he didn’t.” 

“Good. Where are you headed?” 

“I don’t know, I thought of heading into the square to see if anybody knew where I should go, um, yeah.” 

The constable – whose yellow police windbreaker had a nameplate clipped to it that read _SULL_ though the rest was obscured by something dark and sticky-looking splattered on the material – took his helmet off to reveal a black-haired man in his late twenties, with hazel eyes and bits of gore splattered on his cheek where the helmet hadn’t come down to. 

“I’m Collin of the Cheshire Constabulary – or what’s left of it – at your service.” 

“Harry. I live up – well, lived – up the road. I’m not sure where to go, exactly. I guess we’re supposed to evacuate because of these…” He gestured at the dead zombie a short distance away. 

“These zombies, yes. Kind of stupid, but I guess the fucking things actually can happen. Certainly caught us by surprise. It’s a good thing you didn’t head towards the square.” 

Collin looked in the general direction of the main part of Holmes Chapel with a dark look on his face, and Harry followed his gaze curiously, seeing nothing. 

“Why?” 

“The church.” 

“What about the church?” 

“Well, some people stick to religion more than they should. They saw the reports about the dead walking the earth, but instead of following the orders to evacuate they decide to pray for a resolution. The situation gets worse, see – maybe a family member gets infected, or they can see the things staggering around the next block, or maybe they get bitten themselves – so they head over to the church. All kinds of people – men, women especially, some even bring their children – and what happens?” 

Harry shook his head in silent confusion, feeling a sense of foreboding as Collin talked. 

“Think about it. These things are drawn to their prey – us, the living – and from what the higher officials can gather they partially rely on sound. Have you ever been around the church during mass? You can hear the whole congregation praying and chanting for blocks around through the stone walls of the chapel. Not to mention they were sounding those fucking church bells endlessly, essentially ringing the dinner bell for anything with a hunger for flesh that was within a few miles’ radius. So imagine this: church bells tolling endlessly, hundreds of people in and around the church praying feverishly, practically begging for God or Jesus or whoever the fuck to save them – it’s fairly obvious God has stepped out for lunch, in my opinion – and they just draw more of the things to them. So you have people inside the church, and poor bastards outside of it, wanting to get in except there’s no room amongst the pews and the cellar – dear god, the cellar was a charnel house waiting to happen – as the dead get closer. Those outside with half a brain that isn’t dedicated to Jesus turn and run for it, and I’d say for certain most of them got away if they were anywhere near a semblance of average fitness, while the people inside the church know the dead are coming, and are praying louder – for what, I don’t know. Maybe they hoped a police unit would roll by – and we did, but our convoy stopped four blocks away because we stood no chance in hell of getting any closer – maybe they thought a tank battalion or an infantry company would be marching by and save them, some perhaps thought foolishly a helicopter could rescue them from a church with nothing whatsoever close to a flat roof. For all I know they were praying for God himself to materialize at the altar with bolts of lightning and a minigun.” 

He sighed, turning and shooting a zombie that came staggering across the intersection without a second’s pause. 

“But soon the dead were surrounding all four walls, and they just hammered at the big double doors over and over again while the people inside screamed and prayed. Worse still, some people who had been bitten and had gone to the church to pray for a cure – kind of like praying the gay away, but somehow even more stupid – turned inside the church and started killing people. So they’ve got zombies outside, zombies inside, and everyone quite literally loses their shit. From what we gathered with binoculars from a rooftop a few hundred meters away, some lunatic must have said that God wanted this, that this was all God’s plan and they could not stand in the way of it, and threw the main doors open.” 

Harry looked at Collin in horror, and the officer gave him an incredibly false smile at the expression on the youth’s face. 

“I can assure you that the masses of undead were _thrilled_ with that. So they start pouring in. Some people with intelligence ran out a small door in an office in the rear and out into the cemetery, where they were able to lose the few undead stragglers that weren’t pouring through the front doors amongst the gravestones. Others with a remarkable sense of self-preservation climbed up into the belfry and blocked or destroyed the stairs and ladders up there – though I don’t think these things can climb ladders. But apparently some idiots went down into the basement, which only had one exit that was blocked long ago.” 

Collin gave a short, incredulous laugh that was devoid of humor. 

“Someone that escaped before the dead came through the doors told me they were discussing how the cellar was a fallout shelter during the Cold War, and was all reinforced and had old supplies in it and would be perfect to last a few days in.” 

A helicopter flew low overhead and practically clipped the tops of some small trees down the road, sending a powerful rotor wash down onto the ground before it was gone. It had appeared and disappeared so quickly that Harry barely had time to look and see the Royal Air Force roundel painted on the rear of the fuselage before the noise of the rotors faded away into the surrounding cacophony of the apocalypse. 

“What the fuck did they think this was, a Soviet attack? How much good does an underground room do you if it doesn’t have blast doors, environmental filtration systems, food and water – not moldy Civil Defence biscuits from 1974 – and a means of defense against the moving, un-living, persistent threat just up the stairs? God fucking damn it. They just thought _we have God and a fallout shelter, we’re set!_ Fucking idiots. The last thing I saw before we turned tail and got out of there was the vicar hanging himself from the belfry with the ropes used to ring the bells.” 

Harry didn’t know what to say, letting the officer wallow in his reflection for a few more moments. The sound of a car crashing in the distance broke his reverie and made Collin look around warily again. 

“Look, you need to get out of here before it’s too late. The evacuation corridors are getting overrun slowly from the south, and you may be at the tail end of pack of survivors.” 

“So where do I go?” 

“Most of the main roads to the north are manned by regular military, Territorial Army, and surviving police units are doing checkpoints at certain high-traffic areas, and as the roads all converge into a few main routes up into Scotland the security is better. But the dead are everywhere, and especially around London. The further south and the higher the local population, the more of these things there are. They may shut down the evacuation routes or abandon them if the dead get too close or overrun the army checkpoints. I know the major cities are conducting evacuations by train, and British Rail is only running trains north, nothing south. The station here was overrun about two hours ago, and the only military police unit in the area fled to the main parts of Cheshire. The evacuation route out of there is your best option, and you may have mere hours to get there alive.” 

“Will I make it?” Harry could hear the fear creeping into his voice, and he hated himself for it. 

The officer looked around for a moment, muttering something to himself before sighing and looking Harry dead in the eyes. “Yeah. Hop on.” 

“What?” 

“I’ll take you as far as I can. Get on.” 

Collin slid forward in the seat, gesturing for Harry to mount the motorcycle behind him. It was a tight fit between the constable’s back and the storage units on the rear end full of police equipment as well as a blue emergency light on a little pole. The police checkerboard decals on the bike were visible here and there beneath old bloodstains and grit from wherever the bike had been driven. 

They started down the main branch of the road with Harry clamped onto the back of Collin’s police jacket, drawing level with the burning house with the two parked fire engines before Harry tapped the back of Collin’s helmet. 

“What is it?” Collin asked, putting the motorcycle into park and letting the engine idle. 

“My mum, um…” 

“Where is she?” 

“Home. A few blocks away.” 

There was a short pause. 

“Is she alright?” 

“No.” 

The constable twisted in his seat, looking back at Harry for a moment before his eyes went wide behind his visor. He pushed Harry’s head down while drawing his sidearm, and Harry twisted to the side to see a fireman in full protective gear staggering towards them from behind the cab of one of the fire brigade engines, his arms outstretched and a snarl visible beneath the blood smeared on the faceplate of his oxygen respirator. Collin shot twice, missing the fireman’s head and glancing his helmet with one of the rounds. The second bullet smashed into the valve on the firefighter’s oxygen tank, releasing a massive pressurized jet of air that threw the zombie to the ground with a bang. Collin aimed carefully once more and put a bullet through the firefighter’s mask with a “for fuck’s sake.” 

“Now, what about your mother?” 

“I can’t leave her like that. She’s my mum.” 

“Not anymore she’s not. Don’t make the same mistake so many people did with their infected relatives.” 

“I’m not leaving her as one of those things. If you don’t want to help, I’ll just get off and walk back to my house.” 

The constable snorted. “And how are you going to kill - put her to rest, then?” 

“That cop you killed had a gun on him.” 

“Do you know how to use it?” 

“…No.” 

“Well, that’s settled.” 

Harry dropped his head and looked at his hands on his lap. “Please? She _was_ my mum.” 

Collin cursed at something or someone under his breath before nodding. “We can’t spend too much time, so no dramatic speeches. Hold on tight.” 

He held the handlebars to the side and accelerated, whipping the police motorbike around and speeding towards Harry’s house, following the directions the youth shouted in his ear. 

*********

They rolled to a stop outside of Harry’s house, the block completely abandoned and debris of people’s lives lying everywhere. 

“What’s her name?” 

“Anne.” 

Collin cast a glance to Harry’s front door. “You going to wait out here?” 

Harry fidgeted with his hands before glancing at the living room window. “Yeah.” 

“Okay. Call out if something shows up. If they get close, run inside. Hopefully I won’t have to look for her.” 

“Okay.” 

The officer dismounted from the motorcycle, pushing his helmet into Harry’s hands and walking to the Styles’ front door with determination. He turned the handle and walked into the entryway, taking in the sight of the living room and the random black spots of dried infected blood on the floor. Walking a little further, Collin heard a soft noise in the kitchen and gripped the pistol in his hand a little tighter. 

Anne was in her old position at the counter, turning around when she heard the constable’s footsteps from behind her. She snarled and took a hesitant step forward, upon which Collin gave a small little smile and raised his pistol to rest the sights on the center of her forehead. 

“Hi Anne, the name’s Collin. Nice to meet you.” 

*********

Collin stopped the motorcycle at the intersection, while a stream of people all heading north past military checkpoints through Cheshire and towards points north passed them. 

“Here’s your stop, Harry.” 

“Where are you going?” 

“The surviving Cheshire Constabulary is meeting up with military units at a rally point to see if we can find anymore civilians to evacuate, before the masses of dead from the south get to this region. Hopefully we can save as many as possible.” 

Harry nodded and smiled thinly as he got off of the motorcycle, accepting Collin’s proffered hand and shaking it warmly. “Stay safe, yeah?” 

“I’ll try, Harry. You just get north and survive. Your mother would have wanted that.” 

“Thanks for what you did, Collin. And for saving my life.” 

“All in a day’s work. Good luck.” 

“Thanks.” 

“Stick to the evacuation routes unless they get overrun. If that’s the case, find a group of soldiers and stick with them. And Harry… watch out for the living too. Some people get a little dangerous in a situation like this.” 

“Got it. Come and find me when you get north, all right Collin?” 

Collin gave Harry a little half-smile. “I’m not sure anything is guaranteed anymore, Harry. But I’ll try.” 

Harry let go of the policeman’s hand and stepped back, waving goodbye a little sadly as Collin turned the police motorcycle around and headed back down the road that they had driven up. He watched the constable go past the trees and houses that lined the road until he couldn’t see the man’s yellow windbreaker any longer, then turned and joined the line of refugees that stretched into the distance. 

*********

**APPROXIMATELY ONE HOUR LATER**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR JULIET – CHESHIRE**

The young officer stood up in the hatch of the APC, watching the stream of refugees pass by his vehicle. He briefly made eye contact with a young man that was wearing an open jacket with a t-shirt reading “WHITE ESKIMO” beneath it (what the fuck did that mean?), who had a dirty mane of curly chocolate locks and deep green eyes, but the lieutenant looked away rather hurriedly. The boy’s eyes had this broken look in their emerald irises that was all too common these past few days, and the lieutenant was trying not to remember many faces so he wouldn’t be kept up at night. 

Oh, who was he kidding? Most of these people would probably be dead – or worse – within the week, and his knowledge of the pandemic’s severity guaranteed to keep him awake at night anyway. 

Lieutenant Anderson was the commanding officer of 2 nd Platoon, 4th Company, of the Territorial Army 75th Engineer Regiment. He was in charge of 56 men and responsible for the defense of a civilian evacuation route over the River Dee in Cheshire, specifically the security of the Old Dee Bridge, a sandstone structure with numerous arches that spanned the river. 

The problem was that he was completely out of his element in being tasked with this responsibility. The lieutenant was young with a rather boyish face, and he was an architect when he wasn’t called to duty in the Territorial Army. 

More importantly, his _entire unit_ was unprepared to be in this position. They were engineers, not military policemen or infantry, and were inexperienced in crowd control. They had been instructed to screen as many evacuees as possible for infection and be on the lookout for bites and scratches, but many people had been injured by accidents around their homes or in their cars in their haste to flee north – as all of the television broadcasts were saying to do – so it was impossible to effectively screen everyone. Some of his men were currently placing demolition charges along the support columns for the bridge, and Lieutenant Anderson had sent his gruff, weathered veteran that was his second-in-command, Sergeant MacKinnon, across the bridge and as far down the evacuation route as possible to determine exactly how much time they had. He had been gone for four hours and wasn’t answering his radio, which denied the Lieutenant of much-needed advice and reassurance. 

To even further compound the situation, Lieutenant Anderson had not been explicitly instructed on what to do with the people that _were_ infected, a few of which had been found by his men and pulled out of the flow of people and vehicles clogging the bridge. He had been loosely informed by his superiors as to the nature of the infection and what happened to the infected individuals once they were deceased, but he wasn’t too keen on shooting people while they were still alive. The officer decided to put roughly a dozen men on either side of the bridge on his side of the river, and infected individuals were taken to either group and monitored. The ones that collapsed were quickly isolated by his men, and were dealt with when they arose from the earth, no longer interested in anything but carnage before bullets shattered their skulls. These sporadic gunshots were heard by refugees passing over the span, which only quickened the haste of the crowds to get away from the checkpoint for fear that they would be pulled out of line next. 

That system had worked for the majority of the past day and a half of evacuations, but the crowds of refugees got thicker and more desperate as the hordes from further south drew closer. Even though the epidemic was (apparently) taking place simultaneously across the country, Anderson knew that within each geographical area the infection seemed to radiate outwards from a certain point – a highly populated town, the motorway, an airport – and traveled as a wave across a region before meeting a similar horde from somewhere else, trapping any evacuees between roving packs of the undead. 

All Lieutenant Anderson was certain of was that two hordes south of Cheshire had combined to form a super-horde, and it was getting closer. The smell of decay was thickening in the air as breezes blew from the south, and a faint hum of some indescribable noise from a few kilometers away could be heard in the rare moments of silence around the bridge. 

The severity of the situation was apparent when the officer received a radio transmission from regional commanders, the only one he had received all day on the chaotic network of evacuation orders and fire support missions and overrun units’ calls for help, telling him to prepare the bridge for demolition when the horde drew near. In the transmission, some beleaguered colonel had told the equally beleaguered engineer to blow the bridge without regard to any refugees still left across the river. Anderson understood the reasoning behind this order. The infected didn’t show much prowess in fording bodies of water, and if there was no bridge to be crossed the hordes could be slowed down. 

Lieutenant Anderson doubted that the undead could actually be stopped, though. 

He felt a sense of panic growing in all of the people at the bridge. The sensation was tingling in his chest and spine, and he could see fear – primal, unmistakable fear – on the faces of many civilians that passed through the ranks of his men. Children were crying, mothers sobbing, fathers and husbands trying to lead their families to safety… 

That fear posed the biggest problem to his men, many of whom were physically assaulted when they tried to separate families. At first, this resulted in his men having to determinedly separate angry fathers from bitten wives or children, but as the situation deteriorated, the hordes got closer, and his men were spread thinly among the swelling crowds, the response was varied greatly among his men. Some were compassionate, deciding to let a child who was obviously bitten continue on with her family, merely hoping that the next unit at some intersection or another bridge in the system of quarantine checkpoints would catch them and have to shoulder that burden. A few of his men who were more committed to their mission – or more sociopathic, or more afraid, who knows – sometimes would catch these families merely a dozen paces further along the bridge and revoke the temporary reprieve they thought they had received. 

But Lieutenant Anderson didn’t even know what the situation was out of his immediate area. The units behind them could have withdrawn, or have been overrun, or have been ordered somewhere else to fill a gap in the broken line – the quarantine borders that had no point since the infection was on both sides of them. Even at his own checkpoint, he had far too little men to make sure that no one infected was getting through before turning. 

And other groups of his men were not sympathetic. They were angry, angry at being forced to man checkpoints, not knowing if their own families were safe while being hit, kicked, and shoved by panicked people, and they were uneasy at having to shoot civilians. 

So, naturally, they shot more civilians. 

Anderson watched two of his men stop a family coming over the bridge and look at a little boy’s arm. Even from the lieutenant’s position dozens of meters away on top of a parked Spartan armored personnel carrier, it was easy to make out a bloodied bandage wrapped around the child’s wrist. They appeared to exchange words, and the father angrily shoved one of the soldiers away while the mother sobbed and held her child close to her. Within seconds, the soldiers had unslung their L85s and gunned the trio down, coming close to hitting other people in the crowd on the overflowing bridge. The bodies were shot once more in their heads before being dragged off of the bridge and onto a bonfire off to one side behind a building, where more of his men were waiting with infected individuals for them to turn. 

The officer knew by now that the situation was completely out of control. He watched two Snatch Land Rovers force their way through the crowd from the other side of the river, not caring if they ran over anyone. Soldiers from the Royal Welsh First Battalion were driving the vehicles, and they had been part of a checkpoint a few miles further south along the evacuation route tasked with defending the road. They drove close to Anderson’s Spartan, and he straightened up in the turret to call out to them. 

“You there! Where do you think you’re going?” 

A corporal in the lead Range Rover yelled out the window. 

“We’re withdrawing! And you should too, the fuckers are almost here!” 

“Where’s your commanding officer?” 

The corporal shook his head, starting to drive away. 

“Fucked if I know! Lieutenant’s dead, the Sarge is dead, and most of the other boys turned tail! We were the last ones out!” 

The vehicles sped off, leaving Lieutenant Anderson to look through his binoculars across the river at the crowds. There was another mass of… something, maybe refugees (that’s what he kept telling himself, anyway), that was way off in the distance, only visible as black little ants, and the officer tried to see if there were any more military or police units down that way that he could use as an indicator. He suddenly saw something closer to him, roughly halfway between the further group of refugees and this current mob that was crossing the river. The few stragglers back there were running as fast as they could, and behind them he could see someone facing away from him staring back at the larger group in the distance. The figure was wearing a dark blue beret and fatigues, and Lieutenant Anderson smiled to himself as he recognized the familiar features of Sergeant MacKinnon, who must have finally made his way back along the evacuation route. 

In the binocular’s lenses, Sergeant Mackinnon turned back towards to the Lieutenant hundreds of meters away to show that he was missing his entire right arm and a good portion of his torso, the absence of which caused him to list to the left off-balance. His face appeared vacant and his mouth hung open, and dried blood stained his uniform. 

The smile disappeared from Lieutenant Anderson’s face, and he lowered the binoculars, unwilling to look at his former mentor’s undead shell any longer as he fought the urge to vomit. An officer as junior as he was should not have been burdened with such an enormous responsibility as to blowing up a bridge on a civilian evacuation route, but the sight that he had just viewed was enough to frighten him. It frightened him into doing exactly what High Command wanted him to do, and he ordered the soldier sitting underneath a nearby tree and fiddling with the demolition triggers to blow the bridge. Never mind that he probably could have waited a few more minutes to allow as much of the refugees as possible over the span, and have used his men’s rifles to engage the undead that were ahead of the main horde until the civilians were all across; all he knew was some barely-restrained terror threatened to take over his military discipline, and the source of that terror was within sight further down the road. 

The sapper with the firing triggers asked him if he was certain, and the lieutenant vehemently swore, climbed down from the Spartan, and wrenched the device out of the young man’s hands, twisting the arming pin while ordering his men off of the bridge _right this fucking second_ over the radio. The two-dozen men on the bridge turned and ran, well aware of the lieutenant’s tone and what he was going to do. As soon as the last man was clear of the bridge, Lieutenant Anderson pressed down on the detonator and detonated the charges, blowing the ancient Old Dee Bridge that had stood for centuries into pieces and sending vehicles and bodies tumbling through the air and down into the river. 

A few moments later, he could hear another unit blow up the Grosvenor Bridge further along the river, with sporadic gunfire increasing in that direction. His men that had been waiting with some infected living individuals for them to turn decided to dispense with the niceties and machine-gunned them, making sure they had all been shot in the head before retreating back to the vehicles. The engineers of Second Platoon loaded into their trucks and APCs, leaving the bodies where they had fallen instead of bringing them to the bonfire. 

Lieutenant Anderson reported over the radio that he had blown the bridge and was now retreating north, his Spartan leading the column of armored vehicles that trailed behind the last of the evacuees and away from the screams of civilians still trapped on the other side of the river. If the Lieutenant had watched the other riverbank any longer, he would have seen the dearly departed Sergeant Mackinnon latch onto a man’s neck and rip his trachea out with bloodstained teeth. 


	4. "Evacuate Immediately"

**MONDAY THE 8 TH – 2036 HOURS**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE 2 – Westminster, London – approximately five blocks south of Wellington Barracks**

****

Liam swung the butt of his rifle, catching a snarling infected beneath the jaw and sending it flying backwards. It rolled onto the ground and twisted around, spitting out decayed teeth and dribbling black goo all over its chest. 

“On your right!” 

Liam ducked and twisted around, shooting a zombie that was almost upon him in the forehead and watching its skull disintegrate. He turned back to the creature he had previously hit, just in time to see it get shot by one of his fellow Guards. Liam nodded in thanks and fired at a zombie coming up behind the lieutenant, blowing it away as it reached hesitantly for the back of the officer’s neck while he executed another zombie with his pistol. 

“Right lads, continue this way! Keep firing single shots, control your fire! Remain calm – on your left, Jones! Good man. We’re going to continue to the barracks. Watch the alleyways and side approaches, and keep an eye on the parked cars! Come on now, quickly, quickly!” 

The lieutenant wheeled and fired right into the forehead of an undead policeman that was a meter away, stepping over the corpse without pause. 

Like most of the other units in the city, the group of soldiers no longer wore their dress uniforms, dressed instead in camouflage fatigues as the London of parades and ceremonial gear collapsed into an urban battlefield around them. Most of them wore either helmets or khaki berets, with a few men wearing their radio communications headsets underneath their headgear. Liam had his firmly tucked beneath his beret, the earpiece giving the occasional order for a unit to go _here_ , or for a fire mission to be on _this_ coordinate, but he didn’t pay it much attention as he scanned the streets for more of the undead. 

He didn’t have to scan for long; shambling figures were always staggering out from somewhere with a fresh meal on their minds. When there weren’t a lot of the infected, Liam and his comrades bashed their heads in or stabbed them with bayonets to save ammunition. 

There were about forty of them; mostly Coldstream Guards with a few Welsh Guards and some police constables thrown into the mix. The group was currently making its way from one strongpoint to the Guards barracks in Westminster, which had been left lightly manned earlier in the day while the Guards deployed elsewhere around key buildings. 

Now, unfortunately, they had to go investigate why no one in the barracks were communicating on the radio. It didn’t take much imagination to think of the most likely reason, but that didn’t stop them from going to look. 

The wrought iron gates on the southern approach to the barracks were wide open, the guard booth behind a more modern traffic barrier standing empty and surrounded by a dusting of broken glass where its windows had shattered. 

The lieutenant – Liam hadn’t a bloody clue what his name was – gestured for them to stop, and they all crouched low to the pavement as he surveyed the empty parade grounds outside the barracks with binoculars. Liam also hadn’t a clue why they were crouching – it wasn’t like the infected were going to be shooting at them; they couldn’t do more than bite and punch. 

Liam _had_ heard reports of anarchists south of the Thames that were engaging in combat with the evacuation troops, but they weren’t anywhere near here. And thankfully not, because Liam would have killed every single one of them for being stupid enough to pick _now_ , of all times, to try to attack government forces. 

“Alright, it looks mostly empty. I can see a few figures in the windows and on the far western edge of the grounds that look infected, but it’s too dark for me to see them clearly. Here’s what we’re going to do. You have fifteen minutes to head to your quarters, secure any valuable personal belongings or extra gear in your rucksacks, and rendezvous back to this location. From here, we will move to Buckingham Palace to the main barricades and link up with the main force. Got it? No more than fifteen minutes.” 

Liam and the rest of the group moved out, the policemen staying at the gate to provide security for their rear. The Guards reached the dormitories without much issue, dispatching an errant zombie before the group split up to find their own rooms. Two other guys were heading in the same direction as Liam, so they created their own little formation and moved quickly through the barracks. Liam took the lead since he was a corporal and outranked the other two and methodically checked each doorway he passed as he got closer and closer to his room. 

The guy behind him started to ask something quietly – what he was going to say, Liam would never know – when a door to their right that had been shut banged open, and a zombie in camouflage fatigues fell out on top of the soldier. Liam whirled around and looked in shock as the two of them were propelled into the far wall, the rotting creature snapping its teeth at the private’s neck. All three of them let out some strangled scream, and both Liam and the soldier at the rear fired into the zombie’s skull. Bullets flew rapidly back and forth in the hallway, and Liam was almost hit by the other soldier’s panicked burst of automatic weapons fire. The zombie fell to the floor, and the trio made sure none of them had gotten bit before continuing. Liam watched one of the other two go into a room at the end of the hall, and the other disappeared around the corner to find his own room. 

Liam’s room was quiet and undisturbed, the door still firmly locked and no undead people inside with a hunger for his flesh. He quickly crossed over to his bed, laid his rifle down on the neatly tucked sheets and undid his rucksack. The lance corporal checked his watch, seeing that he still had ten minutes to make it back to the rendezvous at the time the lieutenant specified. 

What would Liam take with him? He had no real valuables – certainly no warm letters or pictures from home, those bastards – so he decided to pack more clothes and gear. A few long sleeve thermals in khaki and olive green folded neatly into his large rucksack, and Liam threw in a few utility knives, extra gloves, and wool hats into the bag as well. 

There wasn’t much else in his room that he loved, except for his dress uniform. Liam glanced at the grey overcoat hanging in the closet, and decided that wasn’t really worth his time. Sadly, neither was the red dress uniform, his personal favorite, which hung beautifully on a hangar and glowed in the flickering overhead lights – lights that surged briefly when Liam heard a loud bang in the distance, probably indicating that part of the grid was overloaded and there were no more living utility workers around to prevent transformer blowouts. 

Oh, who was he kidding? Liam crossed over to the closet, pulled the black pants and red coat out and rolled them up tightly, trying not to screw up any of the ornate decorations on the blouse, and tucked them into his rucksack. They barely fit inside, and Liam knew he wouldn’t be able to take the bearskin shako with him, but he really only wanted the uniform itself. 

Most people wouldn’t understand, thinking he should probably pack more gear and clothes that could keep him alive, but that uniform represented everything Liam loved about the Army and just _had_ to go with him. 

With a final glance around his room, Liam locked the door and glanced in either direction down the hallway. In the direction they had come from, Liam could hear strange noises and some scuffling from beyond, but some of the lights in the ceiling had failed and Liam couldn’t see as far as before in the reduced light level. To the right (somewhere) were the other two men, but Liam couldn’t see them. He decided to head that way, and knocked on the door of the room that one of the men had disappeared into. 

There wasn’t a response from within, and Liam was about to grab the doorknob and enter the room when the other soldier appeared from _fucking nowhere_ and stopped him. 

“We don’t know what’s behind that door, mate.” 

“Liam.” 

“Jack. Weapons out?” 

The two soldiers carefully went into the room, expecting to find their comrade dead or worse, but the room was empty. The missing man’s helmet and L85 were on the floor, and his rucksack sat on the bed, but he was nowhere to be found. 

“Fuck ‘im. Let’s get back to the gates.” 

The pair went back out into the hallway, and Liam found himself staring down the hall in the direction of his room at a zombie in full dress uniform walking slowly out of the shadows beneath a dark section of the ceiling lights, black ooze staining its red blouse and most of the side of its face missing. He raised his rifle to shoot, but the other soldier dragged him in the opposite direction. 

“Don’t bother, the noise may bring more of them.” 

No one knew for sure if the infected could hear – but no one knew anything at all, really, so Liam saw no reason to try it out. 

**********

****

**MONDAY AFTERNOON, 7 HOURS EARLIER**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE 19**

****

The evacuations were not going well. Louis’ quarter, first ordered to evacuate around one in the morning, had been told to patiently wait for the military to come and escort them to King’s Cross, and they had done so for the whole day. Now, as the police vans came driving along the street and told them in no uncertain terms to leave immediately – which soon turned into less formal orders to _run like fucking hell_ – Louis became aware that things apparently weren’t going to the authorities’ plan. A large quantity of gunshots could be heard from the west, only a few blocks away, and a column of gun-wielding policemen wearing riot gear ran against the tide of fast-walking civilians. 

The mob of people was pointed in all different directions by policemen and Territorial Army soldiers who had absolutely no idea which way was the safest to get to King’s Cross, and from what Louis could gather their area of the city had seen a massive influx of “infected” that the authorities were struggling to contain. 

Before he knew it, Louis was running along a side street with about a hundred other people (the crowd of thousands was being divided at each intersection they went through) towards a police barricade. Up ahead, some police constables were looking down the perpendicular street and gesturing wildly, and Louis watched every single one of them turn and run out of sight down a street to the right. 

From the left came a massive police truck, a big armored box painted in blackish blue and looking decidedly American in manufacture – Louis didn’t know this, but it was actually a Jankel Guardian Riot Control Vehicle – that was engulfed in flames from end to end, and it rode up onto the sidewalk and crashed into the front of a Starbucks. Louis and the people around him paused, but something inside of him that was wary of the situation said _keep running_ so he ran in the direction the policemen had retreated, but he cast a glance over his shoulder at the street the truck had come from and paused in his tracks as he was stunned into stillness. 

A mass of people, in various states of decay, shuffled quickly along the grey London cement in a single horrifying swarm. 

Louis' first thought, as he stared at the undead creatures that were the result of what this virus did to people, was that this looked perfectly like a scene from one of those horror movie blockbusters - he didn't flinch at the gore, having seen plenty of gruesome injuries during the course of his medical courses, and this was just a large impersonal mob of them still a good distance away. For the briefest of moments he didn't fully grasp the horror of their existence, the fact that these weren't actors with latex special effects gags but were actually people that had been _alive_ and, you know, _actual people_ , but his brain quickly told him with a primal jolt of fear that slapped him back to reality that this was not a good situation in which to stand and gawk with morbid fascination. 

_Run, you idiot._

He became aware of their ungodly moans and their frenzied stumbling pace towards the intersection, the small group of policemen that were their original focus gone and a larger crowd of disorganized refugees in their place. As the crowd started to notice the swarm and panicked, retreating in all other alternative directions, Louis turned to the road the police had disappeared down and started to run again. He looked to his right at the Starbucks with the flaming police truck sticking halfway out of it and saw a stumbling figure walk out of the rubble fully engulfed in flames, oblivious to the walking bonfire that it was becoming and advancing into the street as the rubble started to catch fire behind it. 

Louis ran faster after that, following a set of blocked-off streets in the general direction of King’s Cross. When he reached one intersection, an _actual_ , honest-to-god military battle tank in green camouflage nearly ran him down as it surged around the corner and took out a trashcan. 

Louis ducked onto the sidewalk as it went in the direction he had come from at full throttle, treads grinding into the pavement while it headed towards the distant outlines of the undead mob he was fleeing from. Though Louis didn’t stick around to watch the result, he imagined with a perverse sense of satisfaction that bones and flesh wouldn’t stand up to steel particularly well. 

*********

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE 2 – 2100 HOURS**

Liam and Jack were trapped. They looked in front of them at seven or eight zombies blocking the hallway, and behind them at six zombies that had been pursuing them for much of this floor. 

“Shit. We can shoot our way out; you take the front, I’ll take the back.” 

“I’d prefer to save my ammo.” 

“This is the type of situation you save the ammo for, git!” 

“The noise might attract more of them!” 

“We can deal with that when it happens!” 

Jack looked to a door next to them in the hallway, and gave a short laugh at the plaque mounted on it that read COLONEL OF THE REGIMENT. 

“Let’s report for inspection, shall we?” 

He tugged Liam into the office and shut the door, twisting the lock and leaning against the door to catch his breath. Liam simply glanced around the room, seeing a body slumped back in a chair at one of the two desks in the room. He didn’t bother to point his rifle at the corpse, since it was apparent that it posed no threat. 

Liam inched a little bit closer with Jack, taking in the sight of the man’s formal uniform and the immaculate way in which its creases were pressed. What wasn’t immaculate were the drops of blood on the top of the man’s left shoulder, nor the dark brown of dried blood and brain matter that was splashed across the wall next to the desk. A black handgun lay on the desk where it had fallen from the dead officer’s hand, and a single shell casing sat on the edge of the surface with mere millimeters of wood preventing it from falling onto the floor. 

It wasn’t the Colonel of the Regiment, though – Liam knew that much for sure. This man had the insignia of a major, but Liam couldn’t place which adjutant he was from previous memories of parades and inspections. 

“He’s not even bit,” said Jack somewhat sadly, ignoring the pounding of fists on the office door. 

“Sometimes they just lose the will to live, I guess.” 

“Let’s will ourselves out of here then, alright?” 

Jack crossed over to the windows and smashed them out with the stock of his L85, looking down over the windowsill. 

“Perfect, there’s a ledge right below us. We can drop down onto that, and then down onto the parade ground.” 

“Perfect.” 

The door rattled again, and the shell casing on the desk fell off onto the floor and skipped to Liam’s toe. 

The pair wasted no time in making their escape, though Jack nearly slipped over the side of the ledge and was yanked back by Liam. 

Dropping down onto the hard surface of the parade ground, Liam ignored the stinging in his ankles and ran with Jack towards the gate, where they could see muzzle flashes as the sound of frenzied gunfire blasted out across the yard. Come to think of it, the sound of frenzied gunfire seemed to coming from all corners of the city, but Liam didn’t want to think about the perimeters closing in and the checkpoints falling. 

The lieutenant was there, firing his pistol over the heads of the policemen and some Guards that were crouched in a circle, firing outwards in nearly every direction as infected shambled out from underneath the flickering streetlights. 

“Come on, let’s move it!” 

“Where are the others?” 

There were slightly over twenty of them, just shy of thirty, so roughly half of their number was still unaccounted for. The lieutenant – what _was_ his name? – shrugged as he loaded a fresh magazine into his pistol. 

“I don’t know, and we can’t wait for them. The quarantine zone perimeters are falling in each district, and the engineers are blowing all of the bridges over the Thames to try and stop the swarms coming from the other side of the river. We’ve got to get to Buckingham Palace and form up at the rally point with the rest of the London garrison before it’s too late. Let’s go, lads! This way!” 

Liam followed the rest of the group, not bothering to fire at an approaching undead paramedic as it staggered across the pavement towards him. Once the zombie was close enough, the lance corporal without a home and the shattered remnants of a regiment stabbed it through the eye with his bayonet. 

*********

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE 10 – SIX HOURS EARLIER, 1500 HOURS**

****

The Westland Lynx helicopter hovered over Tower Bridge, casting a large black shadow on the crowds of fleeing refugees below. The displaced masses were heading north towards Kings Cross, where trains were being loaded to evacuate people to the northern parts of the Commonwealth – provided that the rail lines stayed intact, of course. 

All of these people had been told repeatedly by the television, the radio, and every police or army checkpoint they passed to _go north, everybody north! Over the bridges to King’s Cross Station, that’s where the evacuation centers are!_ As London crumbled around the edges, the railway station was a beacon of hope – a way out of this godforsaken mess. At first, people had been bused there when the authorities had evacuated their quarters, but it was now far too dangerous to have units roaming the city and babysitting civilians while the ghouls came shambling out of the alleyways near the Mall. Every soldier and policeman was defending some strong point; not always a special place like Buckingham Palace or Tower Bridge, sometimes it was merely an ordinary intersection pointed to on a map at headquarters by some higher-up, who was watching how close the red-shaded areas were coming to the evacuation centers on the tactical positioning GPS screens and moving units accordingly. __

The bridges over the Thames were all established strong points, but Tower Bridge had the misfortune of being written off by High Command planners. Tower Bridge was fairly narrow – only two lanes and pedestrian walkways – so a detachment of Territorial Army soldiers was posted that was slightly less than other bridges’ detachments. Police constables supplemented the Tower Bridge checkpoint, but many of them had never really held a gun before in their lives and had only barely escaped the panic of the morning hours by the skin of their teeth. Not much confidence was given in their ability to control the high ground. 

Tower Bridge had held out for much of the morning and early afternoon. The infection was overrunning the areas further south, but the stream of refugees was steady through the hours and all seemed to be going well. Sporadic gunfire from the south seemed to be coming closer as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the soldiers and constables manning the checkpoint grew a little uneasy. 

Their task was to maintain a façade of calm authority and deal with any refugees that they could visually determine to be infected. All refugees would be screened at King’s Cross before boarding the trains, but it was best to head off as many infected people who had not yet “turned” before they got to the station. 

Out of every twenty or so people, a few that had blood on them or ripped clothing, or even wounds out in the open would be spotted and dealt with by the men at the checkpoint. The ones who were really far along in succumbing to the infection were easy to spot; they would look feverish, sweating buckets and would walk a little haphazardly as their bodies rotted from the inside out. People around them would notice their condition and walk quickly to get away from them, or even gesture to a nearby constable or soldier, who would swoop into the crowd and bring them to the side of the lane. Three or four soldiers would accompany the individual (if they were determined to be infected) to a small access walkway, where the individual would receive some sort of last rites and be shot in the back of the head and dumped over the side railing into the Thames. As the number of people found to be infected increased as the hours went by, there was less and less time to even give them last rites. 

It was approximately three in the afternoon when the infected started outnumbering the refugees. The captain in charge of the checkpoint stood on top of his Land Rover and zoomed in further down the street with his binoculars, grimacing at the scene that greeted him. Everyone in his sight was covered in blood and gore, had black goo oozing out of lacerations and their mouths, and they were stumbling about like drunks at a party. The moans of the undead hung in the air, as did the odor of decaying flesh and the sharp nostril-stinging smell of gunpowder. 

The captain ordered his men towards the foot of the bridge, ushering any refugees out the way and taking up firing positions behind hastily stacked sandbags and a few parked cars and light armored vehicles. Shambling skeletons caught sight of the several hundred refugees still making their way along the bridge, moaning with excitement at the sight of fresh food and increasing their pace. 

The soldiers and policemen started shooting whatever infected that they could. Rotting flesh was blown every which way as bullets from pistols, assault rifles, and light machine guns tore into the undead, headshots here and there causing the zombies to drop onto the ground like they were puppets with newly severed strings. 

The door gunner on the Lynx leaned out in his harness and started firing indiscriminately into the mob of undead that was shambling down the road. The larger .50 caliber bullets blew arms and legs off of their undead owners, in some cases even disintegrating a few torsos if their owners were rotted enough. The gunner watched a head that was still moving pop into the air off of a dead grandmother’s shoulders from the force of a small shell. The eyes in the head rolled every which way and its diseased teeth snapped at the air as it came down with a thud onto the pavement, cracking apart with the force of the impact. 

The pilot took the helicopter lower, and the Lynx hovered next to a building overlooking the bridge while the door gunner relished the stream of fire he sent into the mob of undead, taking out scores of the stumbling little creeps with his machine gun while the front ranks were picked off by the men at the checkpoint. 

The roar of the helicopter’s blades and the banging of the machine gun attracted the attention of the undead; more specifically, the undead inside the building that they were hovering next to. A few floors above them were some broken windows, and some infected on that floor lurched towards the open expanse of air, falling down towards their prey. 

A human body falling through helicopter blades is not an easy thing for the machine to shake off, and at least six undead corpses fell onto the helicopter from several stories above, damaging the alignment on the blades and causing the Lynx to buck wildly. The tail of the helicopter swung into the side of the building, absolutely destroying the tail rotor assembly and causing the aircraft to spin as cockpit alarms screeched a warning of momentary doom. It fell to the earth in a swirl of smoke and crashed down right on top of the checkpoint on Tower Bridge, killing dozens and dozens of refugees and a great majority of the soldiers and police constables stationed there. The survivors fled in a panic, leaving the span of Tower Bridge wide open for the undead to continue their march across London. 


	5. "Remain Calm"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I've mentioned in previous parts, the latter portion of this chapter will be a bit of a deviation from the narrative with our main characters, and a bit of a time jump as well. It serves the function of giving a background view of the situation, in the style of the book "World War Z." Anyone who's read that will be familiar. It's not a vital plot section or anything, but it's just some filler that I needed to keep this chapter long enough. But filler doesn't have to be boring or without purpose, so I styled it accordingly. If you like it let me know, I can interject later parts of similar material here and there in subsequent chapters. If you all absolutely hate it I won't do it again, but I'm a fan of it myself.

**TUESDAY THE 9 TH – EARLY MORNING, APPROXIMATELY 0200 HOURS **

****

**LONDON – QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE ZERO**

Liam and his comrades had reached the main headquarters of Army Group London, which took up much of the Mall and the squares around Buckingham Palace. The entire area was a veritable mini-city of barricades, trailers, and tents, and previously (in the early afternoon) had scores of men from numerous organizations running back and forth between command posts and communications stations. Different trucks and vehicles were strewn along the tree-lined Mall’s main thoroughfare, stretching into the distance beyond the range of tactical lighting towers that were scattered through the camp. A thick, heavy fog clung close to the ground around them, slowly parting as the soldiers ran towards a tent with a command flag flying from its roof. 

Signs of rapid departure lay all over the area: scattered maps, empty ammunition crates, oil stains from vehicles that had been idling, discarded food packages, and various odds and ends of equipment. The lieutenant looked around, inhaling sharply through his nose. 

“Right. This way.” 

Liam and some of his fellow soldiers followed the lieutenant into the command tent, where about a dozen military officers of high rank stood around a large table surrounded by screens with maps and data displayed on them. A man in the full dress uniform of a Major-General of the Household Division (an incredibly ornate uniform of red and gold design that looked out-of place amongst the other officers’ Number 2 khaki Service Dress uniforms with red collar tabs – though a few of the officers with lower ranks wore the army’s “Number 8” camouflage uniforms) turned to them as they entered. 

Liam’s lieutenant stopped in his tracks, saluting stiffly as Liam and the other soldiers followed suit. “Major-General Osbourne, sir!” 

Of course the lieutenant knew who this guy was, the suck-up. 

“At ease, Lieutenant. How many men do you have?” 

“About thirty, sir. Mostly Coldstream and Welsh Guards.” 

“Very well. You are to proceed to the barricades on the eastern approach, facing Saint James Park. A roughly two battalion-sized force comprised of all surviving Guards Regiments, Regular Army and Territorial Army units, and a few special units are forming the main defensive barricade. That barricade is buying time for the last evacuations out of Hyde Park. You cannot let the swarms overrun your positions, you have to hold as long as possible. Non-essential personnel have already left; I’m sure you saw the signs of their departure outside. I forced the medical corps to leave as well; they had an aid station and quarantine tent set up, which I highly recommend you stay away from. I sent some military police units to secure it, and I haven’t seen them since.” 

“Sir, I thought civilians were being evacuated at King’s Cross, not Hyde Park.” 

“For the most part, they’re not. A few stragglers are, but Hyde Park is being used for helicopter evacuations of non-essential military units as well as government officials. That being said, there is a priority evacuation that has yet to take place.” 

On instinct, everyone looked at the wall of the tent that was closest to the palace. 

“Exactly. Her Majesty has been delaying her departure from the palace for reasons that I cannot fathom. I met with her earlier this evening, as my attire suggests. Her personal guards, both military and civilian police, are hurrying her along as best as possible, and she should be gone within the next two hours – you’ll know when you hear the helicopter take off. After she has departed, the order to withdraw will be given. You will proceed to the northern side of the Victoria Memorial and board one of the various ground transportation vehicles there, where you will be evacuated to the north.” 

“North to where, sir?” 

“No one exactly knows. Probably northern Scotland.” 

They all shared looks. 

“Sir? Indications of a helicopter down in Saint James Square.” An adjutant spoke up from a computer screen, zooming the satellite image in on one of many columns of smoke throughout the city. 

“Priority?” 

“I don’t think anyone essential to continuity of government was onboard.” 

“Then we don’t have the time or men to spare. Leave it.” Major-General Osbourne turned back to them. “On you go Lieutenant, to the line.” 

Two minutes of walking brought them to a scene worthy of a Hollywood drama; a massive defensive line constructed of anything and everything that one could find in a city stretched to the left and the right, crawling with the most soldiers Liam had ever seen in one place. Foot Guards from all five regiments (half of them still in luxuriant dress uniforms), regular Army, and Territorial Army infantrymen stood next to parked armored vehicles and battle tanks that had their guns facing to the east into the trees of Saint James Park, where figures stumbled through the fog in a slow advance towards the palace. 

Upon reaching the line, they were all directed into gaps next to infantrymen who were sighting downrange with exhausted arms and overused rifles. A sergeant major in fatigues near Liam shouted out orders. 

“You there! With the machine gun! Yes, you! Overlaying fields of fire with the gun on your left. Everybody else, listen the fuck up! Ammunition is in the crates behind you; soldiers on supply duty are to get more crates from the trucks as they come along. If you run out, step back and get more as quickly as possible. We are the _last_ line of defense for Her Majesty and the evacuation station. The rest of the city has been completely overrun; we have to hold them here!” 

“Completely?” Liam asked once everyone else went back and forth, loading weapons and opening crates. 

“Completely. King’s Cross fell an hour ago just after the last train got out; any civilians trapped there and the soldiers stationed there to evacuate them were overrun. London is falling, and we’re the last command post left. The Tower of London fell after the SAS evacuated the Crown Jewels and other important items from around the city. They’re here now to make sure Her Majesty gets out safely.” 

“The SAS?” 

“Yeah. And some Military Intelligence commando squad I’ve never heard of, but that’s not really relevant. It seems the end of the world as we knew it brought out a lot of things that were supposed to be in the dark; organizations, directorates, and Offices of Secret Shite that were probably never intended to be used for the purpose of their creation. I for one never thought we had fucking suits of armor, but I swear to Christ I saw a man in a mechanical battle suit with ‘Royal Marines’ stamped on it tearing a bunch of Zeds apart in Trafalgar Square not two hours ago.” 

_“Incoming contacts! LOTS OF THEM!”_

Someone shouted that over the tactical radio network, and Liam looked back towards the park to see the random stumbling figures in the fog had become one single black mass, coming towards the defenses jerkily as the wind blew a strong smell of decay towards the assembled soldiers. 

_“Right, hold on,”_ a voice drawled over the radio network, a soothing quality to its indifference seemingly leaching into Liam from his earpiece and having a similar effect on the soldiers around him, quelling some of the initial panic and fear that the sight instilled in them. It had a slight edge of that stereotypical posh accent to it, conjuring the image of some military academy graduate whose family had likely been officers in the military for five generations and whose father probably had more money than Liam’s bank. 

_“This is London District Command, call sign Overlord. All units standby and calm yourselves down, we are going to deal with this as orderly and as professionally as the circumstances allow. That being said, I’m not going to lie to you. There is a substantial amount of Zeds, thousands – if not millions – of them are coming towards you. Fret not, for I have some firepower to send your way to help you all out until you can withdraw. Standby… can the Forward Air Controller call it in, please?” _

__

*********

**THREE HOURS EARLIER – MONDAY, 2300 HOURS**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE 12 – Primary Civilian Evacuation Center, King’s Cross Station**

****

**ZONE STATUS: ORANGE**

**EVACUATION CENTER STATUS: ORANGE**

****

Louis couldn’t help the flood of relief that washed over him when he stumbled through the barricades outside of King’s Cross. The entrances at the corner of Euston Road and York Way were surrounded by chain-link fences topped with barbed wire, creating a narrow queue that funneled past multiple sandbag checkpoints manned by soldiers and policemen. 

There appeared to be a limited structure to the haphazard security perimeter: the initial entrance was the largest, manned by regular soldiers and flanked by several armored vehicles, the most impressive of which were a handful of Challenger 2 main battle tanks that sat in blocking positions in the middle of the street. The tank commanders stood in their turrets with their hands on mounted machine guns, swiveling their heads to look around the crowd and further down the street. After the main entrance into the maze, the pathway divided into four separate corridors, three of which that took a nearly identical meandering path that twisted and turned until they reached the station doors. The fourth pathway was in the middle, and its fences were arranged so that it only twisted and doubled back on itself a few times. It was obviously a priority lane that could be traveled easily, probably for VIPs or other officials that found themselves having to evacuate with the common masses. 

A few signs were posted here and there, strung on the fences and concrete barriers or mounted on small plastic stands alongside the lanes of the queue. They were emblazoned with instructions and warnings for refugees, printed entirely in large block letters on red, black, and yellow backgrounds in a variety of ink colors. One sign with white letters on a red background had the following message: 

**DO NOT RUN DIRECTLY AT MILITARY PERSONNEL.**

**DO NOT IGNORE MILITARY PERSONNEL WHEN THEY ADDRESS YOU.**

**DO NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN OR VIOLENT MOVEMENTS.**

****

As Louis passed by one soldier near the entrance to the queue he was gestured to stop with a hand held out, palm facing him, like a traffic officer would do. The soldier squinted from behind his gas mask at Louis, looking him up and down for a moment before gesturing for him to continue onwards. 

Another sign was hung above the entrance to the maze: 

WARNING

REPORT ANY SICK INDIVIDUALS. 

DUE TO THE SEVERITY OF THIS ILLNESS, ANY SUSPECTED CASE IS CONSIDERED A PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY. 

**THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORISED.**

Soldiers with assault rifles stood at a few junctions throughout the maze, and more of them manned defensive positions just outside the station doors, which were propped open to expose the inside of the station. Louis could see glimpses of a humongous crowd inside the station, and joined the growing line of people waiting to be admitted inside the fence maze. He was close to the front of the line, and he could hear some sort of commotion where the fences began. 

At first Louis couldn’t quite see what was happening, for his view was partially blocked by a large placard that read: 

FORM AN ORDERLY LINE. 

REPORT UNUSUAL BEHAVIOR. 

**THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORISED.**

****

The crowd moved forward a bit, and he was able to step around the end of the sign to get a perfectly unobstructed view of the maze gates, which were shut and flanked by more rows of military personnel. 

“Come on, let us in!” some desperate-looking mother with two kids at either side screeched, spit flying at the mustached soldier on the other side of the razor-wire-topped gate. He had a captain’s three-star insignia on the epaulettes of his service uniform, which was ripped in numerous places and stained with dried blood that didn’t appear to be his own. 

“I shall let you in when the queue inside has commenced boarding, Madam. We can’t have you all crowded shoulder-to-shoulder in there; it’d be rather unfortunate if someone infected was to come back in the middle of that when you’re packed in like sardines.” 

“They can get us out here too! Let us in!” 

The captain sighed. “You’re protected out here, too. We have marksmen on all the adjoining rooftops, and the armored vehicles and infantry squads in the streets. You’ll be fine until I open this gate, which should be in a few minutes.” 

“We don’t have minutes, you idiot! Let us in, can’t you hear them?” 

Yes, Louis could hear them as well. A low thrum of groans and moans came from all sides, the smell of rot hung thickly in the air, and the sound of sporadic gunshots increased little by little. 

The people in the queue around Louis started getting restless, already strung out from barely escaping death that morning at work or in their living rooms. 

“Yeah man, let us in!” 

“Come on mate, I’ve got my kids here with me!” 

“My mother isn’t doing too well, she needs to get inside and sit down!” 

“The damn things are getting closer, you daft fuck! Come on!” 

Somebody – whoever it was, Louis didn’t even get to see his face; he was moving too fast – rushed the fence and threw himself on it, trying to… Well, Louis couldn’t tell you what the guy was trying to do. The fence was at least four meters tall, topped with razor wire, secured to the ground with weights, and partially dug into the pavement, so climbing it or getting under it didn’t seem possible. 

The man barely managed to wrap his fingers around the chain links before a soldier inside the maze charged forward with his rifle at the ready. No one really knew for certain if anything was said – maybe a soldier yelled _stop_ or _halt,_ but maybe they didn’t – and the next thing Louis saw was the man flying backwards from the fence as four or five bullets exploded his chest cavity. He landed on the pavement in a spray of blood as the people in the line nearby him screamed and ducked from the gunfire. The same soldier that shot him stepped up further and shot the corpse in the head once for good measure, and Louis vaguely analyzed the medical aspects of the trauma for a moment before looking away. 

“Right. Just remember that _we_ are your only ticket out of here, so I suggest you play nice,” the captain said sternly. “I will open this gate in exactly ten minutes, when the queue inside has thinned itself out to accommodate more people. Anyone who has a problem can step up so that I can shoot you, because that’s the only way out of this. I regret to inform you that there’s nowhere else in London left to go. Aside from being the main evacuation station, this is now the _only_ evacuation station. Those few thousand of you here are the only ones who are left to be evacuated, because we’re cut off from everybody else. I know you’re frightened, I know you want to get your families to safety, but you have to wait.” 

Someone else stepped out of line, but instead of rushing the fence this person – some mid-twentyish bleached blonde – walked right up to the captain and glared at him through the gate. He stared at her for a beat before sighing. 

“Do you think I’m bluffing?” 

“Let me through. I _do not_ want to die here waiting for you to get your head out of your arse.” 

The captain shut his eyes for a brief moment and exhaled through his nose before he drew his pistol, shooting the lady in the head at point-blank range through the rows in the fencing and watching her drop to the concrete. The people in line screamed again, and Louis just watched in shock as crimson blood flowed across the grey cement and into the gutter. 

“ _I am not fucking around!_ Stay in line, or stay behind! ARE WE CLEAR?” 

Louis ducked the army officer’s lethal glare and decided that, bar the undead things trying to eat him, the world had gone to hell without them. 

*********

*************

*********

****

****

**EIGHT MONTHS LATER**

****

**DEFENCE INTELLIGENCE FILE K68-9D71-G83**

****

**[The name’s Evan. Sergeant Evan Lockley, Army Intelligence Corps field agent for the recording of survivor testimony from both military and civilian personnel (not that there’s many people who are purely civilians anymore). My notes are reviewed frequently by analysts who compile any new and useful information that may be gleaned from the testimonies – whether explicitly mentioned or only vaguely alluded to – that present another clue to whatever enigma they’re trying to solve these days. My records are sometimes confiscated and my notes destroyed when certain subjects are reached, but I’ll try to make sure you chaps get the uncensored version. Someone has to learn from all of this tragedy.]**

****

*****

****

**CAMP VICTORIA, NORTHERN ZONES OF REFUGE (SCOTLAND), UNITED KINGDOM**

****

**[Sergeant Martin Drakewood of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines sits dejectedly on an ammunition crate; a few days’ worth of stubble graces his jaw and a wide scar on his neck stands out in bright pink flesh. He greets me with “So you’re the bloody spook, huh?” and a firm handshake. He seems reluctant to talk at first, but gets eager once I break the tension.]**

****

**_So, let’s start off simply. Where were you when everything… got to a head?_**

Over the middle of the English Channel. My unit was returning from that bullshit peacekeeping operation in Turkey, and we had pulled out after the sectarian violence got to a head and we were forced to defend our posts in Ankara. No one should really force Royal Marines to stand around for that long in the sun and not expect a few shots to be fired when thugs start throwing rocks, but we all know how that turned out. 

Anyway, there were some odd rumors from some of the officers and strange things on the news, but we weren’t really aware that the situation back home was unusually serious until the incident in Newport, which had just occurred the night before. Not much information had been released – either to the media or by our commanding officers – but the talks of helicopter insertions and a few pieces of news footage showing armored vehicles rolling through the night was enough of an indicator for most of us. They tried to call it a training exercise for antiterrorism operations, but you don’t use armored cav for your generic terrorism response preparedness. 

We were all “officially” – and I use that term very loosely – introduced to the beginning of the whole mess on our flight home. The pilot called our major into the cockpit, said there was apparently some operations officer on the line for him with urgent orders. He came out a few minutes later and addressed the whole plane with the news that we were being deployed on an internal security operation at the order of Naval Command. 

**_And what happened after that?_**

We got off the transport aircraft at one in the morning and were ordered into troop trucks, as well as given all of our combat equipment that we had scarcely finished packing up a day before as we left Turkey for the UK. It was all very hush-hush, very quiet, and none of the higher-ups were telling us what it exactly was that we were being deployed for. 

**_So they didn’t tell you anything? Where you were going, what you were facing…?_**

Fuck, definitely not what we were facing. They only told us we were being mobilized to supplement local authorities for maintaining order during a “civil disturbance.” We were going to maintain order; that was it, under the “military aid to the civil power” guidelines. 

**[He pauses, kicking a stone away from his foot before continuing.]**

****

What they didn’t tell us – besides the whole “people are eating people” thing – was that we were being put onto a planned primary evacuation corridor out of the greater London metropolitan area, which mere days later would be choked with hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people that hadn’t made it onto the last trains out of King’s Cross. And how many of them were infected with a slow burn? Jesus Christ. If more of them had fallen and reanimated later along the route, near our systems of roadblocks or behind it… we wouldn’t be speaking today. The whole regional formation of Army units, Territorials, Marines, and all the local police forces along the corridor would have been massacred. 

As we got off of the trucks that first morning we found out we were on the A1 motorway near Retford. Some anonymous intelligence officer was there – or at least that’s what I think he was, because he was a captain yet he was practically ordering my major around – telling us to establish roadblocks and act as a filter, looking for civilians who fit a certain “set of parameters.” Just vague outlines that pretty much surmounted to stop and check everyone. 

**_Check for what?_**

Erratic behavior, fresh wounds, paleness, excessive sweating, and I kid you not, waking up every single person in a car that was sleeping and making sure they were “okay.” We didn’t even fucking know about the undead until the last minute, just as the national hysteria started taking hold and it went all over the news. Well, before the news broadcasts were ended and they just had that automatic alert system repeating over and over again with the doomsday “please stand by for further information” crap – but that was almost a week later, I think. Mind you, this was before the demonstrations in Norwich, way before Bradford went to hell, and two days before that plane crashed in Manchester... they didn’t tell us shite until they had no choice. 

As for supplementing local authorities… after the first week there wasn’t much of them left. I think the first to be overrun were the doctors and paramedics – you know, they get a victim with a medium time to reanimation in the ambulance or in the hospital that goes comatose, and the next thing they know… I saw many a black helicopter packed with Special Ops commandos landing on hospital helipads those nights. 

The police held out longer since they were armed, but many of them weren’t proficient enough with their weapons – mostly since they were handed firearms mere days beforehand after years of being unarmed constables, with the occasional mandated firearms training lesson for procedural purposes – and others deserted their posts to be with their families. Luckily for us quite a few policemen are divorced and live alone, so we didn’t lose that many to desertion as the officials thought we would, but the numbers were still there. 

Even so, constables could only answer so many 999 calls until the situation was untenable on a mobile level. They had to fall back, consolidate forces and create safe points. Usually the local constabulary, fire service, town government center, or a similar building was a fortified rescue station. Never the hospitals, though – those were always overrun, the dead pouring out of the doors into the surrounding areas. The highest concentrations our recon units ran into were around the hospitals. We soon learned to stay away from those areas. 

**_How long did your positions hold out for?_**

Not even 48 hours after the Fall of London. 

**[Remnants of communications logs from operations controllers seem to indicate that the Retford Sector was abandoned somewhere around 41 hours after the Fall of London (FOL). A partial record shows a single light infantry platoon that continued to hold out in Clayworth until FOL+47hrs, but there is no record of their withdrawal or any further contact from them after that time. That unit is listed as presumed KIA.]**

Everything that was already starting to collapse around the edges just kept getting worse. More infected refugees by the minute, less units that hadn’t retreated or weren’t overrun to deal with them. I suppose we were lucky we were as far up the A1 as Retford, with Doncaster as the next major center of operations right to the north of us. Most of the swarms were concentrated further south along the A1, all of the infected refugees from London reanimating along the initial series of barricades closer to the city. Mind you, these weren’t right outside the city limits, but further up the roads near Stevenage, Huntingdon, Peterborough, and Stamford. When the units stationed there started to report they were low on ammunition, outnumbered, that they were pulling back to designated evacuation sites or just turning tail and driving straight north on the A1… that’s when we started getting nervous. The thing about all of our communications networks and TacNet and all of that information available – meant to aid us on the battlefield so we had a clear situational view and know what’s going on – was that listening to all of that clusterfuck made you wonder when you’d be the next unit that was live-broadcasting your death. 

**_Was that a key factor in the collapse of the checkpoints? Panic among the ranks caused by that information?_**

Well it certainly affected personnel, but our officers – while they were still alive anyway, and the remaining ones in the end – kept us _mostly_ in check from outright panic. I heard what happened at Saint James Park in London, right before the Fall, and that doesn’t surprise me in the least – hell, those Foot Guards and infantry units from the QRF had _the entire infected population of London_ coming right at them, must’ve been millions of them. No one can blame them for what happened. But further out? Yeah, we had a lot to deal with, including the masses from London eventually, but it was all spread out and _slightly_ more manageable. 

The military, and the Royal Marines in particular, are very good at ingraining in you your operational combat role. So sure, we all have that voice in our head saying “you’re fucked, you’re absolutely fucked,” but you’re still firing off rounds at the fuckers as they come stumbling towards the roadblock and you have your CO screaming in your ear to _keep fucking firing_ to sort of balance out that voice of self preservation in your head. 

And as far as the collapse of the checkpoints – you have to keep in mind that these roadblocks and checkpoints were only a temporary stopgap measure to bide time for the relocation centers to be set up further north, in the Zones of Refuge. We’d just consolidate and fall back to the next rally point, over and over again. Sure there’d be less and less of us each time, and at some parts units were less “withdrawing” than full-out retreating, but for the most part we didn’t turn tail and run until we hit the northern zones. We had a job to do, and that was to stave off as much of the infection as possible and help civilians evacuate. 

**_Aside from the obvious challenges of the undead hordes from the south coming right at you, and the collapse of the quarantine checkpoints, was the actual technical aspect of your tasks really difficult? Did a lot of soldiers have issues with that?_ **

I don’t know who had it worse, the local police who were with us that were watching their homes and neighborhoods go up in flames or get looted or fall to the advancing hordes, or the soldiers like us who lived elsewhere in the country that had no way of knowing what was going on at home. If you were close enough and lucky enough – I don’t know if I’d call it lucky, actually – you might get a unit from the area of your hometown that happened to be on the same frequency that would give status reports. But that was not necessarily a good thing; after a period of time every unit would start withdrawing or get overrun, and you’d be left wondering if any loved ones or friends got out in time. 

We had a few desertions; one or two of them actually turned around and came back when they realized how difficult it would be to try and go it alone, and the major – wait no, the major was dead by then, so it would have been the captain – the captain didn’t bat an eye. Just quietly sort of reminded them the old penalty for desertion was back on the books. 

**_And what was that?_**

**__**

The firing squad. The Emergency Military Justice Code Reform Act outlined it all, and similar legislation – or maybe it was the same thing, I don’t know – placed all maintenance of law and order in the hands of military authorities with the declaration of martial law. 

**_The EMJCRA was also what gave you all the authority to use the lethal force that was needed to, well, terminate infected refugees. In a sort of retrograde fashion._ **

****

**[Drakewood snorts with laughter.]**

****

Well yeah, but we didn’t really need it to do our job. We had our orders: shoot all infected individuals that are still alive, and neutralize the ones who weren’t alive but walking around with extreme prejudice. The EMJCRA, while covering our asses on the civilian legislative side of things, was really meant for governing military units and happened to translate well to the maintenance of order in the safe zones after the fact. But in the beginning, it wasn’t so much as “this is the law now” as it was “oh god he’s infected, shoot him!” 

You know, that line is twice as scary in real life as it was in the movies before all of this happened. 

**_Back to the checkpoints. Eventually your position became untenable, sometime around 48 hours after the Fall of London. What was that like?_ **

**__**

Like I said earlier, the edges just started to collapse a little bit faster. Refugees were ten times as frantic as they came through, because they had all seen what was coming after them just a few kilometers down the road. Less vehicular traffic and more people just streaming through on foot – even on horseback or by bicycle or other means, too. But that panicked mob at the end, we couldn’t even get most of them to stop. The major was this close to ordering us to open fire to get everyone to form orderly lines, but that wasn’t going to happen and he knew it. 

The captain – not ours, he ended up getting killed about halfway into it by an infected refugee that turned in the blink of an eye, but the one that I think was from military intelligence – he was privy to more information than us and he knew that it was getting really, really bad. Helicopters were flying overhead, transport planes were practically clipping the treetops as they went for RAF bases further north, fires were spreading everywhere and that god-awful smell that had been in the air for days grew stronger. It was when we started seeing more infected than healthy refugees when that _oh shit_ voice in your head became an “OH SHIT” that you were saying out loud as you shot a snarling zombified teenager in the face at point blank range. 

**_Was your unit’s withdrawal ordered, or was it just a collective decision?_**

**__**

A little bit of both. We were putting rounds through our guns faster and faster, and a massive group of them – and I mean _massive_ – was visible in the distance, spread across the entire motorway and the surrounding neighborhoods. We all sort of turned and looked back at the intelligence officer, who was our de facto CO now that the major and the captain were both dead. 

The major had been taken down by a Zed that came up from a blind spot, that slipped right between two barriers and got him while everyone’s back was turned. The fucker must’ve come from one of the nearby neighborhoods behind us, cause he certainly didn’t come from the front. 

But anyway, the intel officer knew we wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. He tried to raise Command on the radio and ask for orders, but they were swamped with orders and status reports and air strikes from all over, trying to keep the situation from completely collapsing. He looked at all of us and said, “I’m not going to let you all die here. Load up and withdraw to the next rally point.” 

My squad and a few others took the rear guard, and we kept manning the checkpoint the best we could while the rest of the unit packed up the larger equipment and loaded the men onto the trucks. We managed to hold out until everyone was packed up and moving north away from the checkpoint, and while we were loading up ourselves we listened on the TacNet to some light infantry unit making their last stand at the Grantham train station. That’s when I knew we had to leave. 


	6. "The Battle of Saint James's Park"

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE ZERO**

**TUESDAY THE 9 TH – 0400 HOURS**

****

**ZONE STATUS: RED**

Liam fell backwards onto the pavement from the overpressure of the Paveway IV 500 pound bomb that exploded nearby, landing hard on his back and watching a black, misshapen object come tumbling towards him. It was when the blob landed on his side and snapped bone-white teeth at him that Liam realized it was the charred remnant of a zombie with enough mobility left in it to still pose a threat. Groaning with the effort, Liam pushed the corpse to the side and rolled in the opposite direction, rose to one knee a few meters away and fired a few rounds into the squirming charbroiled zombie. 

_“Lima Five-Six, you have approximately one-five-zero targets moving in on your left flank, coming up from the Underground stop. Eleven Delta, do you copy? I’m not receiving any transmissions from you, are you – ah, shit. Nine-Eight-Two, watch the road to your right – watch it! Quickly now, pull back \- I’ll get a gunship to your sector. Hornet Two-Three, I need your guns for close support for an infantry squad facing approximately two hundred infected – hurry up before they get overrun. They’re next to the red brick building northwest of…”_

The defensive line across the western end of Saint James’s Park was collapsing around the edges, as an unstoppable tide of undead just kept coming at the assembled soldiers and police who were firing as fast as their weapons would allow. Machine guns were overheating and their barrels warping, armored vehicles were spitting out an impossible amount of rounds from their chain guns, and helicopters and fighter-bombers roared by on paths parallel to the defensive line to drop ordnance on the undead with unerring precision. 

Liam turned to the sound of screaming to his left and saw a Welsh Guard getting eviscerated by a zombified barista, going limp as the creature thrashed and bit into him. Liam’s rifle made short work of her head and he swiveled around to shoot a zombie doctor in the face that was trying to scrabble over the barricades as the radio screeched in his ear. The operations controller from London District Command was trying to keep people from panicking as best as he could, but there were several times Liam had heard him shut a unit’s radio feed off when they became inconsolable or were being eaten alive over an open mic – it didn’t help much, but Liam was more thankful for the airstrikes that were still being called in by a forward air controller with deadly accuracy than the sensitivities of the unit’s resolve. 

_“Huntress Nine-Eight, fire for effect on map grid one-five-two-eight-six. Rapier Flight, I want you to drop four Storm Shadows along Horse Guards Road; I’ll get that targeted for you right away. Hotel One-Niner, did you get that? I need your laser designator along Horse Guards Road for Rapier Flight.”_

__

Liam sunk his bayonet into the face of a zombie in a business suit whose left sleeve was on fire and listened to the dead air for a moment, or as long as he could afford to before he was prying an undead firefighter’s rotting hands off of a sergeant major and pulling the noncom away from the barricade to safety. 

_“Hotel One-Niner, do you copy? Any forward air controller on this frequency, report in.”_

__

An AgustaWestland Merlin helicopter flew by incredibly low overhead, firing all of its five machine guns down into the ocean of zombies and blowing dozens of them apart, only for hundreds more to take their places as all of undead London shambled towards the sounds of battle coming from the park, the end of Birdcage Walk, and the rest of The Mall. 

_“Any **surviving** forward air controller on this frequency, report in... Damn it. Rapier Flight, orbit around once more as I establish a designator for you.” _

__

Liam heard a low rumble from the rear, and turned to see a Warrior IFV roll by with its gun swiveled directly towards him. Even though the vehicle sat higher than him on its treads he couldn’t stop himself from ducking, and felt the 40 millimeter shells rip through the air a couple of meters above his head as they were flung towards the zombie horde. The shells were just a few more projectiles out of probably millions being fired at or dropped on the undead, and body parts were flying everywhere as explosions ripped through decaying flesh. The smells of death and gunpowder clung to his nostrils, and Liam envied those soldiers who had their gas masks on to escape the smell that made him want to throw up. 

_“Satellite link is established… Rapier Flight, you are cleared to fire on the designator. All ground units, watch for any splash damage.”_

__

Liam had been involved in a live-fire exercise with Storm Shadow air-to-ground missiles once before, and he knew they had an overpressure wave that hurt like a bitch – and he had been further from the drop zone then, too. 

“Everybody! Heads down, get down low!” 

Liam listened to the sergeant major near him that was still alive and dropped into a low crouch, pulling down on his helmet with one hand to brace himself and cover his face slightly. He was glad the thing had still been strapped to his ruck, and that he had the forethought to replace his beret with it when he reached the defensive line earlier. The khaki beret that was now tucked into his rucksack with his other wool winter hats would have offered very little protection from the shrapnel and stray rounds flying through the air, or from the grabbing hands that had scrabbled at his helmet a few times from over the barricades when he got too close. 

There was the faint roar of jet engines overhead and a rumble, followed seconds later by a _massive_ series of explosions that knocked Liam all the way down to the ground and seemed to shake a nearby battle tank like a toy as a brilliant glare lit up the dark battlefield, revealing the shadowy blurs that were the undead being tossed like ragdolls into each other and flying through the air alongside pieces of cars, buildings, and pavement uprooted by the explosives. 

Ignoring the ringing in his ears and the stinging pain in all of his joints, Liam got back up to quickly dispatch several zombies that had gotten over the barricades and were almost upon the rattled soldiers. As quickly as he noticed them he had to dodge to the side as a flaming wheel that used to be from a car somewhere bounced towards him and continued behind him, skipping into the distance. Liam looked around and realized _why_ the undead had gotten over the barricades so quickly – the blast waves from the air strike had broken the entire defensive fortifications apart, scattering the various materials around and allowing the undead to pour through. 

“ _Overlord, the airstrike damaged the barricades! We can’t hold them!”_

“Fuck! Pull back! Fall back to the memorial!” 

_“Pull back, the fuckers are breaking through!”_

__

En masse, the soldiers and policemen from the defensive line – their numbers already noticeably fewer than before – turned and ran towards the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace with the undead right at their heels. Liam dodged an armored personnel carrier that was frantically backing up, while a soldier next to him was not so fortunate. 

There was no calm withdrawal; just a swarm of panicked retreat instead. Frenzied gunfire rang out in all directions; some bullets striking soldiers that were still alive and well that were caught in the crossfire instead of the infected. Some were saved by their ballistic armor or only suffered from minor flesh wounds, but others were killed or mortally wounded from wounds in vital areas – those who were close enough to goodhearted comrades were picked up or bodily dragged with the rest of the units, but those who were too far behind or too gravely wounded were left where they fell by the rest of the fleeing units to be buried under an avalanche of the undead. 

There was a line of Challenger tanks and other armored vehicles up ahead, and Liam watched some soldiers jump on or into the vehicles as they pulled away from the approaching undead – to the frustration of the operations controller. 

_“Where the hell are you going? Command has not ordered a retreat, you stupid sods – fuck it all. Overlord to Sentinel, I’ve lost the armored units on The Mall. …Affirmative, they’re retreating. I’ve got surviving infantry units left, standby… Omega Eight, what’s the status on Her Majesty’s evacuation?”_

__

_“The helicopter will take off in ten minutes, we’re securing some last minute artifacts and personnel that Her Majesty **insists** on evacuating – she sent some people out on the primary helicopter, we’re waiting for the secondary to get on station. Omega Eight out.” _

__

_“Overlord copies. All surviving Foot Guards, hold your positions at the Victoria Memorial. I repeat; all Foot Guards units are to hold defensive positions at the Victoria Memorial, you **have** to buy Her Majesty some time!” _

__

Liam skidded to a halt and looked around, seeing other Foot Guards and a smattering of regular infantry forming up around the circular memorial and throwing leftover supply containers and other detritus into a makeshift barricade. They looked like a ragtag group; some were barely dressed and equipped, others were in camouflage fatigues, and others were still in ornate dress uniforms but missing their bearskin shakos and white gloves. 

_“All police, Territorial Army, and regular Army units with the exception of C Squadron, fallback to the evacuation points. C Squadron, I need your Scimitars to support the Foot Guards until Her Majesty evacuates.”_

__

_“Overlord, we are unable to comply. We have no, repeat **no** ammunition left for our guns, we are combat ineffective.”_

__

_“You still have petrol, correct? Run the bastards over!”_

__

_“That’s a negative, we’re pulling back to defend the evac area. I’m not killing off this whole squadron in a suicide mission!”_

__

_“C Squadron, this is directly from High Command. I repeat, you are to hold your position at the Victoria Memorial in support of the Foot Guards detachment and protect Her Majesty’s position until her departure. You **will** comply with that order, or you will be found in defiance of a direct order.” _

__

_“If we-”_

__

_“Goddamn it! C Squadron, that is a direct order! YOU WILL COMPLY.”_

__

_“…copy.”_

__

But just as a few of the armored vehicles started to turn around, the operations controller came on again, his previously steely monotonous voice ragged with frustration. 

__

_“Overlord is on with a situational update from Sentinel. C Squadron, you are to belay that order and proceed to the evacuation station in Hyde Park. Large amounts of infected are threatening to overrun the security perimeter around the landing zones and you’re needed to assist, top priority.”_

__

_“C Squadron copies.”_

The armored unit commander and the operations controller were equally terse with each other, fully aware their verbal spat on the air just moments before ended up being pointless. Neither of them dared to press the issue any further, the disembodied voice of the operations controller back to his indifferent monotone as he collected himself and moved on with trying to keep a handle on the deteriorating situation. 

__

_“Since you have no ammunition just run them over, I don’t know what else to tell you. Foot Guards units, I only have heavy close air support and artillery fire left for you, and I can’t use them when the undead get too close. You’ll have to hold out as long as possible.”_

__

Rifles were loaded, bayonets were fixed, and Liam stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Foot Guards as he prepared for the duty he had been trained for years to perform – protect his Queen at all costs, down to the last bullet and his last breath. 

*********

****

**2 HOURS EARLIER**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE 12 – Primary Civilian Evacuation Center, King’s Cross Station**

****

**ZONE STATUS: RED – BLACK STATUS IMMINENT**

**EVACUATION CENTER STATUS: RED**

****

****TACNET QUERY NARRATIVE: [S-A-Z-12 EVAC CENTER TO OVERLORD** : CENTER IS AT **RED** STATUS. ADDITIONAL REINFORCEMENTS REQUESTED FOR EVAC CENTER: INFANTRY UNITS, ARMORED VEHICLES, CLOSE AIR SUPPORT. **]** **END OF QUERY. ****

**[[OVERLORD TO S-A-Z-12 EVAC CENTER** : REQUEST DENIED. NO ADDITIONAL INFANTRY UNITS AVAILABLE. NO ADDITIONAL ARMORED VEHICLES AVAILABLE. ALL AIR SUPPORT ASSETS ARE ALREADY ON PRIORITY FIRE MISSIONS. NO FURTHER CLOSE AIR SUPPORT IS AVAILABLE. **RED** STATUS IS ACKNOWLEDGED. **]]**

Louis waited as patiently as he could inside the terminal, shuffling along the platforms with thousands of other people that were boarding commandeered Network Rail trains after being examined thoroughly. The lines of refugees were cordoned off by soldiers and policemen with assault rifles, shotguns, and submachine guns that walked back and forth to look for any signs of infection. 

More signs were posted along the platforms, their messages being barked at the refugees by soldiers every few feet. 

STAY IN AN ORDERLY LINE.  
DO NOT LEAVE YOUR LINE FOR ANY REASON.  
REPORT UNUSUAL BEHAVIOR.  
**THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORISED.**

A few dogs were in cages that everybody on this line had to pass, and they barked at people on occasion, snarling and crashing against the bars of their enclosures with fury burning in their eyes. When somebody was barked at, they were diverted to a second line where soldiers stood with a strange scanner thing that emitted a purplish light and hummed noisily. The soldiers held the device up to people’s eyes and seemed to decide whether they were allowed to board the trains based on what the screen told them – people who seemed to fail whatever test was given were hustled away by police or soldiers in riot gear to a separate area and didn’t come back, while those who didn’t were waved onwards towards the trains. 

HEALTH SCREENING IS MANDATORY BEFORE EVACUATION.  
REPORT ANY CASE OF ILLNESS.  
DUE TO THE SEVERITY OF THIS ILLNESS, ANY SUSPECTED CASE IS A PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY.  
DO NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN OR VIOLENT MOVEMENTS.  
**THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORISED.**

Louis advanced close to the dog cages, and the dogs barked both at him and the people immediately in front and behind him. 

“Step to the side, sir,” said a policeman holding an MP5 that was pointed ever so slightly in his direction. Louis wisely decided to step to the line with the scanner, and waited for his turn as the sounds of gunfire increased outside the station. The sounds from outside only made the crowd inside the station more nervous, and Louis listened intently to a small group of army personnel standing nearby as he passed them. 

“-the Seventh’s been overrun, from what I heard.” 

“Really? How the fuck did that happen?” 

“The Tower Bridge checkpoint fell so fast they didn’t have time to put a warning out over the radio, and a swarm of the things fell upon the Seventh while they were still awaiting orders from High Command to blow the bridge. From what I gathered from a survivor, a major ordered them to retreat and shot their colonel when the idiot tried to get them to hold their positions against a million Zeds or so coming over the bridge. Even then only a fraction of the Seventh got out, but those that did owe it to that guy.” 

“Did you hear about the SAS?” 

“Which fucking story, mate? I’ve heard they’re all over the city, blowing up things and evacuating VIPs and such.” 

“They are, but did you hear about The Tower?” 

“No.” 

“A squad of them went to get the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London and found the garrison of Foot Guards stationed there overrun. They fought an entire company of zombie Grenadiers to get the jewels and were plucked out of there by a helicopter.” 

“Damn, all for a bunch of antiques.” 

“It’s national heritage or summat.” 

“I’m sure the Zeds will appreciate them when they’re the only things walking around in the end.” 

“Let’s not jinx it, I’d like to get out of here alive. Speaking of which, how long do we have?” 

“Here? All I know is we’re absolutely surrounded and the snipers on the surrounding roofs got overrun already… we’ve just got the tanks in front of the main gate and the doors if they get to the fences.” 

“Shit. So no more than half an hour at best.” 

“Yeah. But keep it quiet; we’re trying not to spook the refugees any more than they already are. This’ll probably be the last train out of here – when the captain says for us to board, go and get on quickly, because whoever’s still in line is going to try to rush the train.” 

“How are we going to keep the train from getting compromised?” 

The soldiers looked around shiftily, and Louis quickly glanced away as he took another step forward to pretend he wasn’t listening. 

“They’ve already pulled the police constables back off of line duty and stationed them at the doors to each carriage on this last train. When the time comes, the Regular Army lads and us go through the doors and get on board. If whoever’s left behind rushes the train, the constables fire a burst from their MP5s and then the doors get closed – it should provide enough separation for us to safely pull out of the station. If anyone tries to jump on, we have the guards on the roof of the train to pick them off. We can’t let the evacuation train get compromised with any unscreened infected refugees, that would be a disaster. Anyone who’s been screened and isn’t infected will get out with us, but anybody who hasn’t been cleared yet won’t.” 

Louis subtly inched up in line, wiping the newly formed beads of sweat on his hands on his pants leg. A young woman in a ripped blouse was getting scanned, and she sighed with relief as the soldier waved her forward to board a train car. Then the guy directly in front of him reached the scanner, and Louis noted he was sweating profusely as the soldier with a red cross armband raised the scanner to the guy’s eyes. 

The next thing he knew the guy had slammed the medic to the floor and was sprinting through the checkpoint, knocking two soldiers aside as he tried to get past the, oh, fifty additional soldiers or so in the immediate vicinity that all turned towards this new disturbance. 

Louis found himself shoved aside as a soldier with a submachine gun aimed down the length of the platform at the fleeing man. 

“Everybody get down! YOU THERE! HALT! HALT OR I SHOOT!” 

Soldiers, police, and civilians alike dove to the ground to get out of the line of fire as the beret-clad soldier unleashed a burst of automatic fire at the man and gunned him down. There was a pause as everyone collectively made sure they weren’t hurt, and a policeman closest to the man stood up and shot him once in the head when his arm twitched spasmodically. 

Louis was now next in line, and the medic brushed some dirt off his uniform indignantly before turning the scanner back on and pointing it towards Louis’ eyes. 

The light just started to pulsate in his vision when the doors to the platform burst open. Everyone startled again and turned to see a tank commander and his three crewmen come sprinting in, breathlessly grabbing the nearest senior officer and hurriedly gesturing towards the doors. 

“They’ve broken through the barricades! We put our tank in a blocking position in front of the doors, but the windows are exposed - we have a minute at the most!” 

“Shite - ALL UNITS WITHDRAW! WITHDRAW TO THE TRAIN!” 

Louis glanced back to see the medic and the surrounding soldiers already at least ten steps ahead of him, dropping unneeded gear on the platform as they sprinted to the doors of the last train on the platform. Louis thanked his quick reflexes to follow them, because all of the civilian refugees still in line behind had a delayed reaction of a second or two before stampeding just behind the withdrawing soldiers in a panic to get to the safety of the train. Gunfire erupted all around him as he ran, screams and yelled orders filling in as background noise as bullets smacked into metal, concrete, and flesh across the platforms. 

The open doors of the last train beckoned to him from a dozen meters away, a police constable standing firmly in the center of the doors with a machine pistol at the ready. A few screened refugees and soldiers filtered into the train carriage beside him at lightning speed, jostling the constable as he aimed over their heads. 

Louis felt his foot land on something firm on the ground – a discarded assault rifle with the bolt locked back on an empty magazine – and slipped forward with his suitcase in front of him, watching the platform rushing up to meet his face as he became conscious of the fact that this would probably be his doom, since he was losing his head start on the panicked crowd of unscreened refugees by the millisecond. 

Until Louis felt a hand grab the back of his neck and haul him up by the collar, the hand’s owner not breaking stride as he dragged Louis towards the train doors and shoved him past the police constable. The nursing student held on tightly to his bag and turned to see the tank commander twist to the side, having just saved Louis’ life and now ensuring his three crewmen were able to get on board as well. Once they were through the doors the tank commander boarded, and the police constable let loose a long burst from his weapon as the door alarm started chiming pleasantly. 

Louis watched as the doors slid shut with a hiss, their rubber seal muffling the screams coming from the platform as those left behind were shut out of their last chance for evacuation. 

The same mustached captain from the maze gates stood at the front of the carriage, reloading his pistol and glaring at the group of refugees huddled in the rows of seats. 

“You lot find a seat and shut the fuck up! Everybody on this train is safe - for now. Cause us any trouble and we’ll toss you out the window. And no, it won’t be while we’re stopped!” 

The train started moving away from the platform with a jerk, and Louis just managed to glimpse a mob of zombies crashing through the doors at the far end of the platform before the carriage went into a tunnel and out of the station. 

**EVACUATION CENTER STATUS: RED/POSSIBLE BLACK**

**SECTOR ALFA, ZONE 12 STATUS: RED/POSSIBLE BLACK**

**** TACNET QUERY NARRATIVE ****

****

**[[OVERLORD TO S-A-Z-12:** CONFIRM STATUS. **]]**

****

**** NO RESPONSE FROM AREA COMMAND POST. REPEATING QUERY. ****

****

**[[OVERLORD TO S-A-Z-12 EVAC CENTER [KING’S CROSS STATION]:** CONFIRM STATUS. **]]**

****

**** NO RESPONSE FROM EVAC CENTER COMMAND UNIT. REPEATING QUERY. ****

****

**[[OVERLORD TO S-A-Z-12 EVAC CENTER [KING’S CROSS STATION]:** CONFIRM STATUS. **]]**

****

**** SYSTEM ERROR:**  
NO TACNET UPLINK FROM **EVAC CENTER COMMAND UNIT**. CONNECTION LOST.  
LAST TRANSMISSION BEFORE CONNECTION WAS LOST WAS A PRIORITY 1–ALFA DISTRESS SIGNAL.  
EVAC CENTER IS MOST LIKELY COMPROMISED AND/OR OVERRUN COMPLETELY. ******

****

**[[QUERY:** LOCATE PERSONNEL TRANSPONDERS SHOWING VITAL SIGNS WITHIN ACCEPTABLE QUARANTINE PARAMETERS IN EVAC CENTER **.]]**

****

**** SEARCHING…**  
**0** INFANTRY OFFICER TRANSPONDERS DETECTED WITH ACCEPTABLE VITAL SIGNS.   
**SEARCHING…**  
**0** INFANTRY TRANSPONDERS DETECTED WITH ACCEPTABLE VITAL SIGNS.   
**SEARCHING…**  
**0** ARMORED UNITS WITH CREW TRANSPONDERS SHOWING ACCEPTABLE VITAL SIGNS.   
**SEARCHING…**  
**0** AIR UNITS OPERATIONAL WITHIN AREA.   
**SEARCHING…**  
VEHICLE CLASSIFIED AS **“EVACUATION_TRAIN_091”** MOVING AWAY FROM STATION AT SPEED OF **60 KM/H** WITH **207** REGULAR/TERRITORIAL ARMY TRANSPONDERS ON BOARD. UNKNOWN NUMBER OF POLICE, UNKNOWN NUMBER OF CIVILIANS.   
**ANY ADDITIONAL QUERIES? ****

****

**[[OVERLORD TO S-A-Z-12:** CONFIRM STATUS. **]]**

****

**** SYSTEM ERROR:** NO ACTIVE TACNET UPLINK FROM **S-A-Z-12 COMMAND CENTER** FOUND. CONNECTION LOST. **SEARCH AGAIN? ****

****

**[[** NEGATIVE. **]]**

****

**** UPDATING…**   
LACK OF COMMUNICATION FROM COMMAND CENTERS AND VIABLE UNIT TRANSPONDERS WITH APPROPRIATE VITAL SIGNS SUGGESTS **EVAC CENTER [KING’S CROSS STATION]** AND **S-A-Z-12** HAVE BEEN OVERRUN.   
**CHANGE TACNET CLASSIFICATION OF S-A-Z-12 TO BLACK? ****

****

**[[** AFFIRMATIVE. **]]**

****

**** UPDATING… TACNET CLASSIFICATION REFRESHED.**   
**S-A-Z-12: BLACK. **  
**S-A-Z-12 EVAC CENTER [KING’S CROSS]: BLACK. **   
**AWAITING FURTHER COMMANDS. ****

****

**[[TACNET OVERRIDE:** UPLOAD ALL DATA TO HIGH COMMAND BATTLEFIELD INFORMATION SYSTEMS. **]]**

****

**** UPLOADING… UPLOADING… UPLOADING… DATA UPLOADED TO “HCBIS”. ****

****

**** TACNET ALERT: SECTOR ALFA, ZONE ZERO** IS AT **RED ** STATUS. ****  
ALL OTHER SECTOR ALFA ZONES ARE AT **BLACK ** STATUS.  
**DIVERTING ALL SURVIVING UNITS TO SECTOR ALFA, ZONE ZERO.**  
**SUGGESTED COURSE OF ACTION:** ACTIVATION OF LIMITED “PHOENIX PROTOCOL” WITHIN THE SOUTHERN ZONES OF LONDON DISTRICT [SECTOR ALFA]. **CONFIRM? ****

****

**[[** NEGATIVE. **]]**

****

**** ENTER COURSE OF ACTION. ****

****

**[[** PREPARE UNIT “OMEGA EIGHT” FOR VIP EVACUATION PROTOCOLS AND DIVERT UNIT TO **S-A-Z-0**. PREPARE ALL SURVIVNG UNITS FOR EVACUATION ORDER ALFA. BRING ALL UNITS ASSIGNED TO “PHOENIX PROTOCOL” TO STANDBY STATUS ALFA AND ARM WARHEADS **.]]**

****

**** ALERT:** OPERATIONAL ORDER TO ARM WARHEADS REQUIRES AUTHORISATION.  
**ENTER AUTHORISATION CODE. ****

**[[** A 7 8 N F 1 5 2 **]]**

**** CONFIRMING… CONFIRMING… CONFIRMING…**  
**AUTHORISATION CODE IS VALID.**  
**CONTINUE WITH PREVIOUS COURSE OF ACTION? ****

****

**[[** AFFIRMATIVE. **]]**

****

**** ”OMEGA EIGHT” DIVERTED TO S-A-Z-0.**  
**EVACUATION ORDER ALFA PREPARATIONS ARE UNDERWAY.**  
**“PHOENIX PROTOCOL” UNITS ARE ON STANDBY STATUS ALFA.**  
**WARHEADS ARMED. ****


	7. "Death at the Gates"

**TUESDAY THE 9 TH – 0443 HOURS**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE ZERO – the gates of Buckingham Palace**

_“Fire mission, danger close. Map grid one-five-two-seven-one, fire for effect.”_

__

_“Huntress Nine-Eight has a solid copy with map grid one-five-two-seven-one, danger close.”_

__

Artillery shells slammed into the park merely a couple of hundred meters away, blasting large gaps into the sea of undead stumbling towards the palace. The flashes were blinding, the noise deafening, and the shock waves knocked Liam off balance enough that he had to recover quickly before another Zed was almost on top of him. Little bits of dirt and rock and grit rained down steadily, noisily pattering off of Liam’s helmet and causing him to blink rapidly. His head felt sore from the concussive force of all the blasts and his teeth ached from clenching them during the impacts. 

_“Overlord to Omega Eight, what’s your status?”_

__

_“Stand by Overlord, give us a minute here.”_

__

_“Omega Eight, be advised that I’ve lost most of the ground units in front of the palace. You have to get Her Majesty out of there **now** !” _

__

_“Omega Eight copies, we’re almost ready to go.”_

__

“I’m out!” 

“Last mag!” 

“Fuck, I’m out too! Anybody have more ammo?” 

Liam knew they were in trouble long before that, long before more than half of their number fell around the Victoria Memorial – not to bullets and bombs, but teeth and grabbing hands that rendered decades of innovation in ballistic protection technology useless. Guards from all five regiments, smatterings of police constables and Territorials, not to mention scores of regular infantry were all torn apart without regard to rank or unit… a substantial percentage of their number rose from the pavement as well, adding their Kevlar/fatigue/red tunic-clad selves to the mob that advanced without pause across the grey cement in front of the palace. Liam and the other surviving Foot Guards fought with a desperation not seen before, the knowledge that their Queen had yet to escape firmly at the front of their minds as bullets flew from the front of their rifles. 

_“Rapier Flight to Overlord, we’re out of munitions after this last run and we’re low on fuel. We’ll make this run a gun run, if that suits you alright.”_

__

_“Copy, your vector is two-five-zero.”_

Several aircraft roared overhead at low altitude – Liam couldn’t tell what type they were – as they rained down shells from their Vulcan cannons that rapidly went **_thwackthwackthwackthwackthwack_** through the swarms of the undead and blew corpses apart here and there while they kicked up large fountains of dirt. 

“Watch it, to the-” some Grenadier Guards lieutenant’s last order ended in a strangled yell as several zombies surged forward and dragged him down to the pavement, leaving their highest ranking soldier the same sergeant-major from before on the main firing line. 

_“Overlord to ground units. Be advised I’ve lost contact with the last of the attack helicopters and Rapier flight’s returned to base for refueling and rearming, so you have no air support. Repeat, you have no air support.”_

“Alright, back up into the courtyard! We’ll try to shut the gates and buy ourselves some time!” 

Liam backpedaled, maintaining fire discipline while most of those around him simply turned and ran, not wanting to be the last one inside the gates. His rifle barked five times before the bolt locked back on the empty magazine – his _last_ magazine – and Liam felt the familiar calling of _oh shit_ for the thirtieth time this evening as a zombified office worker rapidly closed the distance between them. Recovering quickly, Liam impaled the zombie’s head on the end of his bayonet and tugged it out, running the last few meters inside the palace gates before they were slammed shut. 

“You!” Liam whirled around to see the sergeant-major pointing at him. “Your TacNet headset still work? I’ve lost mine. Notify command that they’re out of time!” 

Right. Liam reached up and swiveled the microphone of the headset so it was close to his jaw, turned the volume up and yelled into it. “Overlord, this is… uh, crap. This is the Foot Guards detachment at Buckingham Palace, do you copy?” 

_“Foot Guards unit, how are you holding out?”_

__

“There’s not much of a unit left!” 

_“That’s alright. It’s not like I have any fucking units left on the ground to confuse you with anyway. What’s your message?”_

__

“We’ve locked ourselves in the front of the palace behind the main gates, and we don’t have that many men left. Most of us are out of ammunition, so you have to notify whoever is getting Her Majesty to safety that they’re out of time!” 

_“Got it,”_ replied the controller. _“Stand by for a second. Omega Eight, come in.”_

__

_“Omega Eight here; go ahead with your message.”_

__

_“The Guards aren’t going to last much longer and the fucking Zeds will probably breach the gates in a few minutes. Are you ready to evac?”_

__

_“That’s affirmative; Her Majesty is onboard the primary helicopter and extra security personnel are on the two backup helicopters. We’re just getting the last of our men on now, though we’ve sustained some casualties – apparently the palace isn’t as secure as we were told. A large number of staff and security personnel are infected; they’re roaming the halls of the palace right now. Her Majesty almost got trapped herself while we were coming down from the North Wing, but we managed to use some of the passages to make our way through to the evac point.”_

The palace gates shuddered as scores of zombies pressed against them, sticking their arms between the bars and thrashing to try and get at the soldiers within. Ironically, Liam spent most of his guard duty at the palace in the past yelling at tourists to get off the very same fence that was now bending beneath the weight of hundreds, no, thousands of Her Majesty’s formerly living subjects. 

“ _… and advise any personnel you’ve got left out in front that their evacuation routes through the palace have been compromised; we’ve lost contact with all police officers and soldiers posted throughout the main halls and passageways. There’s an evacuation point set up at the palace garages; there might be an LAV or something left there. Omega Eight is boarding the helicopters now, we’re airborne in thirty seconds.”_

__

_“Copy… Foot Guards detachment, did you copy that? Your escape route through the palace to the gardens is compromised, but if you can get to the palace garage there might still be something left for you to bug out with.”_

__

Liam kept making the same realization that his prestigious assignment to this crack Guards unit might have just gotten him killed: the only remaining helicopters in the entire city were leaving, he was out of ammunition, and his last means of escape was narrowly slipping through his fingers. 

“We copy that, we’ll advise when-” Liam was cut off by the screech of metal, and he turned around to see the gates start rocking back on their locks as more zombies from the endless sea outside the fence pressed into the narrow gap where the two iron portals swung forward on their hinges to meet. 

The sergeant-major grabbed Liam by the shoulders and spun him around. “Well? What did they say?” 

Liam looked past his impromptu commander with wide eyes at the gleaming white façade of the palace, focusing on a red-coated Yeoman of the Guard visible in one of the windows closer to them whose uniform was just a little too red and whose face had just a little too much flesh missing. 

“Um, the helicopters are leaving and our evacuation route’s been compromised, sir. Our last chance is at the palace garages, but we have to hurry.” 

“Sir! The gate’s not going to hold!” 

“Fuck, which way is the garage?” 

_“Omega Eight is clear from the ground; Her Majesty is safely onboard and we’re proceeding to the assigned safe landing zone to the north.”_

“SIR!” 

“I don’t know!” 

“SIR! THE GATES-” 

The clash of metal on metal rang out as the gates popped free from their retaining locks and swung open a few meters, allowing a thick stream of undead through the gap right towards the Foot Guards who had long since run out of ammunition. The already-short distance between the wall of grey flesh and the huddled group of red wool uniforms and camouflage fatigues lessened by the second. 

“Sir! What are our orders?!” 

“You fight, men! Fight to the last goddamn man!” 

Although out of ammunition, the Foot Guards were not unarmed. At the end of each man’s rifle was a bayonet that could not have been put to better use than in the hands of the elite soldiers of the assembled five regiments, and they were about to be utilized to their fullest lethal potential. 

“Sir, we can still withdraw to the garage and establish defensive positions there,” Liam urged. The sergeant-major gave him a firm shove to the side and pointed towards the advancing corpses. 

“Focus on them, son, not some half-cocked escape attempt!” 

Steel flashed in the glare of the remaining spotlights as the roar of three helicopters came from overhead, spiriting Her Majesty to safety outside of the city while her Guards fought and died as their last-ditch attempt to buy her some time came to a close. 

Liam stumbled backwards and thrust into zombie after zombie, kicking ones that had gotten too close away from him and stabbing to pierce skulls and sever grasping limbs when they were at the optimal range. He glanced around between thrusts, taking in the tactical situation as it ebbed and flowed by the second. 

Artillery shells continued to rain down further away from the fences, blasting holes in the undead mass here and there, but nowhere near enough to make a difference in the onward march of the infected towards the palace and the sounds of battle. 

Four men fell here, three more died over there, six Guards were devoured on the northern flank… the number of undead flowing through the gates far outpaced the amount dispatched by the bayonets of the surviving soldiers, and Liam knew it was time to abandon his post and fall back to a better spot – maybe somewhere within the palace where the walls were narrow and only allowed two or three of the undead to advance at a time, somewhere that allowed his commander to think of a new plan for their escape. 

“Sarge, what are your orders? We can’t hold out here much longer!” 

The older noncom – who at this point was blasting away with his sidearm at the closest five infected, dropping them each with one shot – turned from the surrounding tidal wave of undead to Liam with a grimly blank expression. 

“Lance Corporal? Tell Command that the gates have fallen, and thank you for your service.” 

The sergeant-major promptly held his pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger faster than Liam could respond, leaving the young soldier to watch the dead man fall to the ground, his blood spreading to join other rivers of crimson flowing across the pavement. 

_Fuck._

Liam looked around to see very few of his fellow Guards left alive and came to the obvious conclusion that his position was now untenable. 

_Fucking shit._

Half of him wanted to stay rooted in place and go down fighting as per his last set of standing orders, but the other half that demanded self-preservation was already causing him to backpedal. Technically he was probably the highest ranking soldier at this post now, and he was also the _last_ ranking soldier at this post that was still alive, a realization he made as his gaze flitted numbly across his comrades being torn apart a dozen paces away. 

_Fuck me._

Though it would be difficult for him to admit it, he retreated from his last post towards the palace at a full sprint; losing his helmet in the process and listening to it bounce back towards the undead horde close behind him. The moans of the undead were loud enough to prevent him from realizing a voice was yelling in his earpiece for a few precious moments, though his brain mercifully took notice as he ran through the eastern arch towards the interior quadrangle of the palace. 

_“You! ID number Four-Eight-Six-Two, whoever the fuck you are! Take a left or you’re going to find yourself in a world of hurt in the center of that palace.”_

__

Well, that _was_ Liam’s military identification number, so he felt inclined to listen to the familiar voice coming through his headset. 

_“Okay then, good. Now continue along this wall towards the next set of doors, and then follow the passageway there to the right. DO NOT, for fuck’s sake, go into any rooms or follow any other passageways than what I tell you, because you increase your chances of getting eaten by a thousand percent if you fuck things up like that. Got it?”_

__

“Yeah.” Liam entered a set of double doors and slammed them behind him, twisting a set of massive steel bars that fell down onto brackets and locked the door firmly. Once he was sure he’d have a little warning before the mob outside came crashing in behind him he looked around, seeing a few policemen in riot armor staggering around in aimless circles off to his left – or that is, until they saw him and let out some ferocious snarls before advancing in his direction. 

_“Given that I can hear them over your microphone – and I know I’m not hearing them by me, because I know exactly where the fuckers outside are – I’m going to go ahead and tell you what an elite little toy soldier like you probably already knows. Wait, you **are** a Foot Guard, right? Let me see your personnel files….” _

__

Liam quickly went to the right, outpacing his pursuers easily as he followed the halls painted a regal-looking cream color. This hallway wasn’t too wide and it was on the ground floor of the exterior wings, so he imagined it wasn’t one of the more exalted areas of the palace where the Queen spent a lot of time –servants and security workers were probably the only people ever to walk through here, which might just work in Liam’s favor if it wasn’t really populated. 

“ _Ah yes, and a Coldstream Guard at that. Very nice. Well Six-Two, keep in mind that mobility is your ally here. There’s probably a thousand or so Zeds within the palace walls themselves: idiots on staff who didn’t show up for the health inspections, non-essential personnel who snuck back in with the hopes of getting on a helicopter out, Metropolitan Police and some of your fellow Guards who gallantly held their positions against swarms of biters so that Her Majesty could escape… But I digress. The lesson of the day is to keep moving, okay? Don’t stop to kill every single one you come across if you don’t have to; it’ll slow you down and you might get blindsided by a Zed who was stuck in a storage closet that’ll get you from behind, and then it’s all over.”_

__

A zombie in a bloodstained and torn maid’s uniform struggled to get up from her sitting position against the wall as Liam approached, and he gingerly leapt over her legs as she growled and lunged for his ankles. He didn’t bother glancing back at her and kept moving. 

_“You’re not one of the units with a vital signs monitor on your TacNet transponder, great. So tell me, are you bit? Scratched? Hurt or anything? Actually, never mind. I can see here that you’re moving way too fast to have a sprained ankle.”_

__

“You can see me?” Liam asked, cross-checking what appeared to be an undead butler with his empty rifle and sending him crashing backwards into a locked door… which promptly burst open to free six trapped zombies in shredded police uniforms from the room beyond. It might have just been the missing flesh from some of their mouths, but they appeared absolutely delighted to see Liam and started falling over one another to get to him. He broke into a light jog and continued moving, reaching a t-intersection in the hallway. 

_“Not exactly. If you were one of the few units that were doing the test trials for personal POV cameras on the TacNet system I could see everything that you do, but mercifully you’re not and therefore I don’t have to watch you get eaten if you fuck up like I did with most of those gents. I can get most of the city’s CCTV, but I don’t have access to the Buckingham Palace security cameras –the palace security control room has all the camera feeds, but they’ve been dead for hours now. I’ve just got your position on the TacNet maps – oh, sorry! Take a left – that are overlaid with satellite imagery and blueprints of various buildings, including the palace. TacNet truly is a marvel of modern warfare, you know – not that it matters much, seeing as modern warfare’s not that useful anymore.”_

__

Liam hurried down the left passageway, stepping over several bodies lying on the floor with shattered skulls that appeared to have been lined up against the wall and executed. 

__

_“I’m Overlord, by the way. In case you couldn’t tell.”_

__

“I could,” Liam grunted as he bayoneted a solitary Yeoman wearing the elaborate Tudor period uniform standing in his way. “I’ve been listening to you all fucking day on my headset.” 

_“Yes, well… Now you get me one on one, seeing as it’s pretty much just you left.”_

__

“Wait, in the whole fuc- uh, the whole city?” 

_“Take the second door on your right. And yes, everyone else is either evacuated or dead. Mostly dead, though. The evacuations at Hyde Park are done with; the last helicopters left a little while ago. Anyone who remained either managed to get out with the last of the armored vehicles to the north or died where they stood, I’m afraid. I had a few scattered police and infantry units at certain buildings around the city, but I’ve lost contact with **almost** all of them – other than a few stragglers, you’re all that remains of Army Group London. …Anyway Six-Two, I’m working on getting you a way out right now, but we have to get you somewhere safe first.” _

__

Liam stabbed a zombie police constable in the face with his bayonet and bent down to cut the strap of the MP5 slung over the corpse’s shoulder with the blade, grunting as the nylon shredded and finally gave way. He tugged the submachine gun out from under the body and wiped some dried blood from the receiver before checking the weapon’s magazine, his heart sinking in dismay after finding a grand total of zero bullets. A quick check of the dead constable’s flak vest failed to yield any ammunition either, which in retrospect was probably the reason the man was (un)dead in the first place. 

Liam cursed and threw the MP5 to the floor, regretting the decision instantly when the clatter caused two zombified soldiers to peek around the far corner with vacant stares that might, just _might_ have had a shred of curiosity in their dark pupils that were their last vestiges of humanity. 

_“What’s the problem?”_

Liam took a deep breath and charged towards the pair of zombies, rifle at the ready. 

“I’m out of _bloody_ ammo and none of these _stupid_ zombie cops have any _stupid_ bullets on them,” he grunted, punctuating every few words with a swing of his rifle’s stock to crush a bloodstained face or crack a skull. The lance corporal paused to catch his breath over the two now-motionless zombies that lay on the floor. ****

_“Keep looking, Lord knows there’s enough dead cops and soldiers in that palace that you can find something. Remember to keep moving though, you’ve got to get to safety.”_

__

“And where am I headed, exactly?” 

_“The last evacuation point near the palace that wasn’t overrun was the Royal Mews.”_

Liam paused to check behind the next set of doors in front of him, leaning against the wooden portals until they had enough pressure behind them to roll the dead body of a Welsh Guard out of the way. “The what now?” 

_“The Royal Mews, it’s a fancy name for the palace garage. It’s where all the Queen’s official vehicles were kept, until they were airlifted out of there a few days ago.”_

“Oh right, I knew that. But hold on, they airlifted out Her Majesty’s cars?” Jesus, and people said his regiment’s red wool uniforms were a waste of taxpayer money. 

_“Only a few. The state carriages were all there too, and those things are damn expensive and historically important and everything. Certainly more important than the dozens of soldiers that could have gone on those helicopters, but you didn’t hear that from me. And the cars are expensive Bentleys and Rolls Royces, one of a kind and all that. They didn’t get all of them out though, so if you’d like to joyride one you can go look for the keys.”_

“I’m sure her cars will be greatly appreciated in whatever bunker they’re whisking Her Majesty off to.” 

_“I don’t know what the hell any of the high-level blokes are up to, honestly. Some of them are dead or missing, so it’s a bit chaotic obviously, but they’re issuing a few thousand orders and it’s hard to keep up. A ton of historical documents and artifacts from the city museums and archives were evacuated days ago by special teams specifically tasked to do so. Preserving our history or something like that, I’m not sure. It was in the emergency contingency plans from the Cold War, in an effort to keep some of the great classics from being flash-incinerated by a Soviet H-bomb. The goddamn SAS evacuated the Crown Jewels earlier today, for fuck’s sake.”_

“I heard about that from – well, from someone.” 

Liam warily crept past a well-muscled servant roughly his age that was missing his uniform’s tuxedo jacket, his buttoned shirt except for the collar – the torn, bloodstained scraps of which rested on his neck with an askew bowtie that made him look like a hilariously out of place stripper – and a sizeable portion of his carotid artery. Aside from being an undead freak with a visible death wound, the guy would otherwise be considered pretty good-looking if one ignored the circumstances in which they were gazing at him. 

Not that Liam really gave that more than half a second’s thought; he had far, _far_ more important things to worry about. 

Get more ammunition. 

Get to a safe location for evac. 

Survive aforementioned evac. 

Link up with a command unit _somewhere_ to receive further orders. 

Deal with the undead apocalypse. 

There were probably forty more things after that. 

The half-naked zombie was staring blankly at the wall, almost forlorn with what a naively emotional sod might see as a poetic shadow of his deceased humanity but a soldier like Liam classified as situational stupidity. The youth didn’t seem to notice Liam’s passing at all, and his quiet contemplativeness probably would have sent shivers down Liam’s spine if he wasn’t in such a hurry. 

_“Take the next right.”_

Liam moved around the corner towards the sound of slow, deliberate hammering that echoed through the halls made vibrant by splashes of blood and various small damages to the quiet hues of cream paint and polished furniture. He saw a zombie clad in black fatigues repeatedly smashing its fists against a locked door, relentlessly striking the dark brown wood made slick with congealing blood and that mysterious black gunk that seemed to spring into existence when the undead’s rotting innards were exposed to the open air. 

The soldier’s uniform was devoid of all insignia except for twin shoulder patches that were as dark as the black fabric – Liam had heard of it referred to as “tactical blackout,” the practice of removing bright insignia and unit patches and replacing them with dark grey or black variants to wear on combat uniforms. It was particularly common among special operations units that operated under the cloak of night, done to prevent the enemy from seeing bright uniform pieces that would ruin a soldier’s stealthy advantage. 

The dim charcoal patches were stitched with a symbol in a dusky purple thread that was kind of like a horseshoe with elongated ends sticking out to either side – undoubtedly a Greek letter that Liam failed to remember – and a small skull within the letter that was in grey stitching half a shade lighter than the backdrop of the patch. 

“Hey, Overlord? Who are the guys in black fatigues?” 

_“Quote ‘guys in black fatigues’ describes pretty much half of the special ops units in the city, so you’re going to have to give me more than that.”_

__

“They’ve got a Greek letter with a skull in center of it as shoulder insignia. Does that bring anyone to mind?” 

_“Oh, that’s Omega.”_

__

The soldier continued beating on the door, oblivious to Liam’s approach from the rear. 

“Who’s Omega,” he whispered cautiously, his boots landing as lightly on the floor as the dust falling from a series of errant bullet holes in the ceiling. 

_“Military Intelligence commandos, all hush-hush. Somewhere along the spectrum of they technically exist, but their definition on paper in the general MOD files describes them as a navigation unit or something. Some bland cover story like that. Realistically, Omega Eight was the unit that got Her Majesty out, and probably committed a few assassinations and daring raids over the past decade, but there are a few more Omega units in the system. Some in London, some not… they’re pretty much sent into the worst situations as a last resort or when the stakes are too high to accept failure.”_

__

Liam lined up his attack and swung his L85, the stock of the weapon traveling in a perfect arc to crash into the back of the undead commando’s neck and send him forward into the door. The zombie rebounded off of the bloodstained wood and fell backwards onto the ground, snarling at the new combination threat/meal that stood over him before Liam plunged his bayonet down into the former elite killer’s skull. 

“I thought that was the SAS’s sort of affair.” 

_“Well it is, but Omega’s the one no one knows about. I think Omega could probably defeat the SAS in a fight anyway, but don’t tell them that.”_

__

“Mhmm. I’ll be sure to convey that to the next SAS guy I see in here who’s not drooling black goo.” Liam kneeled down next to the dead Omega operative and examined a holster strapped to the man’s flak vest, pulling out a compact pistol and two additional magazines of ammunition. “Oh, this’ll do nicely.” 

_“What is it?”_

__

“A SIG-Sauer Two-Two-Six and two additional magazines that our Omega friend no longer needs.” 

_“So that’s… forty-five rounds. Make them count, Six-Two. I guess I’ll try to find any information from the dispatches we have around here that I can to see if it’ll help you out. On that note… we can’t tell if these things can hear sounds the same way we can, but gunfire does seem to attract them. Not to be a buzzkill for your newfound toy, but I’d recommend continuing to do things the old-fashioned way unless you absolutely have to make a bit of noise.”_

__

Liam slid the pistol into his belt and continued down the hallway, pausing at another intersection. To his left was a hallway partially barricaded with stacks of wooden chairs and tables, a dead soldier – or what was left of him, anyway – lying spread-eagle on the floor amidst a small pool of shell casings with the receiver of his L85A2 locked back on an empty magazine. 

The middle of the barricade was broken open; the breach like a dark black maw that divulged a shadowy hallway with no working lights or windows to illuminate what dangers might lie beyond. The hairs on the back of Liam’s neck prickled, and his ears strained to catch faint shuffling noises from within the gloom. 

Well, Liam was definitely not going _that_ way. 

Dead ahead was a pair of double doors that didn’t have anything particularly remarkable about them. To the right was a massive security door that came down from the ceiling, probably part of a system meant to lock the palace down in an emergency. Four mangled police officers in riot gear with round ballistic shields strapped to their wrists were slumped against the steel surface, all victims of some undead corpses that appeared to have gone elsewhere to search for more food. 

A control panel in the wall next to the security door flashed a bright red warning light every two seconds, and Liam stepped closer over the tangled legs of the policemen to read the words displayed on a cracked screen above the keypad. 

*EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN – INNER PERIMETER BREACHED* 

So that way wasn’t an option either, then. 

“Overlord, any thoughts on which way I’m going?” 

_“…what do you mean they’re in Quadrant Two? For fuck’s sake, I thought we had MPs stationed there. Fuck it! You, call the security command post. Um... hold on for a moment, Six-Two. Some MORONS can’t fucking radio in a perimeter sighting like they’re supposed to. …What did they say? They’re sending a unit, that’s fantastic. You tell them to keep on it or I’m going aboveground with a fucking rifle to do their job myself. And keep trying to raise Bravo Sector Command._

__

_“Anyway, Six-Two… you’re going straight through the doors ahead of you. They’re going to lead outside the palace. You’re going to run like hell across the open area, jump over the fence and land in the Queen’s Gardens, heading to the southwest. The Royal Mews are the next large building on that southwesterly heading, and there’s a paved pathway that runs along the gardens’ southern border that’ll take you right to it. From what I can gather it’s not too heavily infested, but you’ll need to move quickly to avoid attracting attention. You are not, repeat **not** to enter the main building of the Mews but a small outbuilding surrounded by a low fence and tall hedges that is located behind the structure inside the Gardens’ outer periphery. It’s an additional garage for some of the service vehicles and is less likely to have people in it. Hide out there until I contact you again with your means of escape. Can you manage that without getting killed?” _

__

“Yeah, I got that,” Liam said confidently as he walked through the outer doors, promptly tripping over something and landing flat on his stomach. He turned over to see the upper torso of a policeman in riot gear crawling towards his face, snarling and closing the space between them before Liam could get back up. 

Instead of rotten teeth tearing away his flesh Liam was struck rather hard in the cheek by the flip-down visor of the police helmet, which had gotten in the way of the zombie’s face and was now a barrier between their faces. The confused zombie kept pushing determinedly against the immovable hard plastic until Liam was able to reach down with his free hand to his belt, drawing the pistol he had just found on the dead commando. He shoved the weapon’s muzzle underneath the visor and pulled the trigger, scrambling the zombie’s brain inside his helmet and terminating his gruesome distortion of life. 

_“You okay?”_

__

Liam rolled back up onto his feet and scanned around him, counting twelve infected corpses between him and the fence. 

“I tripped over a zombie, almost got eaten. Don’t worry about it mate.” 

_“Nice. Try to stay alive, okay? I’ve invested too much time into you for you to go ahead and die on me.”_

__

The two closest zombies were a female police constable and a Territorial missing his right arm, so Liam stuck the pistol back into his belt and hefted his L85. He swung the stock of the rifle upwards into the bottom of the soldier’s jaw and sent him backwards onto the ground before pivoting to stab the policewoman in the face with the bayonet, yanking the blade out as she slumped downwards and turning to run towards the fence. 

A police constable with a riot shield still attached to his wrist stood in his way, so Liam shoulder-checked the zombie’s shield and used the momentum to knock him down to the ground before sprinting past two more lumbering infected soldiers and leaping over a low wrought-iron fence into the Queen’s Gardens. 

The pathway was easy to find, and Liam was able to follow its lazily curling route along the periphery of the park without encountering too many zombies for him to handle. Most were easy to slip past in the open expanse of the trail, but Liam was able to silently dispatch any infected that he wasn’t capable of avoiding with his bloodstained bayonet. 

It wasn’t until he physically got to the outbuilding that Overlord had described to him that Liam realized he might be in real danger. He could easily see a few hundred zombies towards the center of the gardens a few thousand meters away that had the potential to move in his direction, and there were several dozen of them rather close to the service garage’s immediate perimeter. 

Liam fought down the tentacles of panic that tried to curl around his consciousness and nimbly slipped between the grasping arms of a few more zombies, trying to make sure none of them were close enough to follow him into the garage by being attracted his mere presence alone. In the end he just had to hope that they weren’t aware where he was heading after he got out of their immediate range and slipped into the garage through a door on the side of the structure. 

The inside of the garage was cavernous, with most of the vehicle bays sitting empty and all of the large vehicle doors closed and locked. A few piles of crates sat here and there throughout the garage; some were military supplies while others just looked like typical inventory that would be found in such a place. In addition to the scattered containers were a few towers of stacked tires and rims along the far wall, as well as a large workbench with rows of power tools that slightly twinkled in the faint aura of the rising sun in the distance that slanted through narrow windows at the top of the wall… and for fuck’s sake, Liam looked at his watch to see it was only an hour or so away from dawn. 

Two vehicles were parked in the garage: one was a small electric cart that looked like a groundskeeper’s work vehicle, and the other was a glistening black Land Rover with government plates that seemed to beckon for Liam’s attention. The lance corporal leaned his rifle against a support pillar rising from the middle of the floor and walked over to the vehicle, experimentally tugging on the driver’s door handle to find it locked. A cursory glance around the garage failed to reveal any key hooks or anything similar, and Liam didn’t know how to hotwire a car so that course of action was out of the question. 

A small scuffling noise grabbed his attention and Liam turned around to see a zombie staggering out of the rear office, its dull eyes fixed on his own. The zombie was dressed in suit trousers, a white button down shirt, and a shoulder holster with a small black pistol tucked into the leather’s embrace that caused him to look decidedly James Bond-esque. 

Liam’s problem was that A) the zombie was between him and his rifle with the bayonet on it, and B) that he didn’t want to use the handgun tucked into his belt for fear that the noise would alert the zombies outside that he was hiding in the garage. Liam cast a quick look around him for a weapon and saw a nail gun sitting on a nearby crate – it might make a noise, but the noise would be considerably less than that of a pistol’s report. 

He picked up the tool and pointed it at the zombie a few feet away, pulling the trigger to send a long nail right into the walking corpse’s skull. After watching the body drop to the ground Liam turned to put the nail gun down, fumbling the heavy device in his hands and missing the crate entirely. 

Something – something impossibly stupid and unfair and undoubtedly a cruel, cruel joke this world was playing on him – caused the nail gun to fire once more when it landed on the oily cement floor of the garage, sending a nail up at precisely the right angle towards the Land Rover to shatter the rear window with a tremendous crash that was followed by the car alarm kicking on. The horn screeched and the lights flashed, and Liam practically flew over to the car to hammer on the door and try to stop the noise. After twenty seconds of panicked attempts to silence the device Liam sighed with relief when it finally ceased, but he knew the damage was already done. 

The soldier sidled over to garage’s entrance, peeking out to see the closest twenty zombies on the pathway staring at the building with unnerving focus. He cursed and slammed it shut before raising Overlord on the TacNet, turning the volume up a little as the first rotting fists started to hammer on the door in a frenzy. 

“Overlord, do you copy?” 

_“I’m here. You reach the garage okay?”_

“Yeah, um... but I’m pretty sure I’ve compromised my location. Where and when is my evac?” 

It was probably a testament to how frequently things had gotten screwed up over the past few days that Overlord took this new and most likely disastrous information in stride after a brief pause. 

_“Well the good news is that your evac is coming to your location. The bad news is that it’ll take over an hour for them to get to you, provided that they don’t run into any major trouble… and let’s be honest, they’ll probably be delayed substantially. The earliest they can reach you is probably an hour and a half, maybe closer to two hours. Can you hold out that long?”_ asked the controller, keeping his disembodied voice reserved and even. 

“It looks like I’m going to have to, doesn’t it,” Liam replied tersely, watching the door flex under the blows raining down on it with trepidation. 

_“Listen to me,”_ Overlord continued. _“If your position is untenable you should keep moving, I can always divert the rescue unit to pick you up at an alternate location.”_

__

“Relocating isn’t an option at this point, I’m afraid. I’m completely surrounded.” 

_“Okay.”_ The operations officer’s voice had an edge of finality to it that Liam had heard before, as quarantine zone after quarantine zone and unit after unit fell to the hordes across London and the controller had tried to rally the remnants of Army Group London towards the center of the steadily decreasing defensive rings. _“Listen, the evac unit will still come to your position, but if they can’t physically get to you…”_

“I know.” 

_“Also, I’m still in the dark on whether High Command is going to order the Phoenix Protocol. We may be working against a time limit here.”_

__

“What’s-” 

_“You don’t want to know the specifics, but rest assured it’s the closest thing to raining fire down from the sky that we have… and no one left in this fucking city’s going to survive it.”_

__

The door wasn’t going to last much longer so Liam drew his pistol, took the safety off, and pulled the slide back to make sure there was a round in the chamber while feeling for the two spare magazines with his free hand. 

Forty-five shots – no, forty-four since Liam had already used the pistol on a zombie earlier. 

There were probably a lot more than forty-four zombies queuing up outside the garage. 

_“I’m going to switch your channel off right now so I can concentrate on guiding the evac unit through the streets to your location, but I’ll come back on to notify you when they’re close.”_

__

Liam didn’t bother giving voice to the knowledge that Overlord wouldn’t have to listen to him die if he did that, a luxury the controller probably was unable to afford earlier in the quarantine when Army Group London was dying by the thousands over open radio feeds. 

“Understood.” 

The door splintered and cracked, allowing Liam to see the silhouettes of several undead nightmares through the breaches and probably letting them see him in all his healthy, uninfected glory. He raised the SIG-Sauer 226 at the entrance, telling himself repetitively that he would be ready for the first zombie coming through that door. 

_“Good luck, Six-Two. Overlord out.”_

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it's been a while since an update, I got a bit occupied. I'll update with the next chapter in a few more days!


	8. "Planes, Trains, and Armored Vehicles"

**TUESDAY THE 9 TH – 0721 HOURS**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR ALFA, ZONE ZERO – Maintenance Garage 4, the Royal Mews**

Liam fell back against the support pillar, gasping for breath as sweat rolled down his forehead and stung his eyes. He blinked furiously, regaining his vision just in time to dodge a zombified police inspector’s snarling attack. The lance corporal made a concentrated effort to force his screaming muscles to comply with his brain’s orders so he could bring the butt of his L86 around, smashing it into the back of the zombie’s head and following through until he heard its skull crunch against the pillar. 

The pistol had long since run out of ammunition, even with Liam making sure to use only one bullet for every zombie. The number of bodies in the entryway of the garage had piled up until the entire door was blocked, and Liam had gotten some respite until the window in the back office shattered from the press of undead, allowing one or two to heave themselves over the sill at a time to renew their assault (and quest for dinner). Since the pistol was now useless Liam had to fight hand to hand with the zombies, using his L86’s bayonet and stock to good use destroying brains so that he might, just _might_ stay alive until the evac unit got there. 

It had been almost two hours since Overlord signed off, and Liam would have gotten back on the TacNet to ask where his rescue was if he wasn’t so sure that the frayed controller would get tired of him. 

A rasping noise broke Liam’s rambling thoughts, and he turned to the next zombie due to be exterminated while flexing his blistered fingers against his battered L86. This zombie was a police officer in riot gear, his Kevlar ripped and torn where it appeared that something had blown up close to him at some point in the past. Liam brought his aching arms back and swung his rifle like a cricket bat, grimacing from the impact that jarred his bones and shattered the composite stock of the rifle. The force of the blow managed to dent the side of the constable’s helmet in enough to fracture the skull – the zombie dropped like a rock, and Liam fell to his knees next to it. He bit his lips to keep in the groan of pain caused by his stinging hands and looked at the various pieces of the end of his rifle that now littered the oil-stained concrete around him. 

Well, fuck. 

While it wasn’t necessarily true that a soldier was nothing without his rifle, Liam couldn’t exactly fight a bunch of zombies with his bare fists and a combat knife – at least, not this many that were clamoring around the shattered windows of the garage and leering hungrily at him with their lopsided mouths. He stabbed a zombified tourist with a camera around its neck – or hell, he could have been a photojournalist, who knew – in the head and sidestepped around an undead Territorial, quickly grabbing a tire iron off of a nearby tool bench and using it as his new impromptu melee weapon. 

Ten more minutes of grueling hand-to-mouth combat with the undead followed, and Liam had never before felt such physical exhaustion. His muscles burned, his joints ached, his skin felt like it was going to rip open with the slightest movement – but his mind had reverted to a primitive level of survival instinct, overriding every signal of pain and exhaustion to prevent him from giving in. Liam stumbled and dripped with sweat, but he managed to keep every zombie that crawled into the garage just far enough away from him so he could bash their skulls in and escape their snapping jaws. 

_“Six-Two, you still alive?”_

Liam fumbled to key the microphone, wiping sweat out of his eyes with his free hand. “I’m here,” he panted. “I’m not sure for how long, but I’m here.” 

_“Excellent. Your transponder was moving around a bit, but I wasn’t sure if it was the kind of movement that indicated you were alive, so...”_ The controller sounded slightly surprised, but Liam didn’t take offense given how his last few hours had gone. _“I have good news for you. A rescue unit is almost at your location, about two minutes out. Are you ready for extraction?”_

__

“Yes, I am.” A sickening crunch punctuated his gasping reply as he crushed a former fellow Guard’s brow with the tire iron. 

_“Fantastic, I’ll let them know. They’re going to pull right next to the garage doors and give you covering fire, you’ll hear them when they’re in position.”_

Liam hurried over to his bag and slung it onto his back, feeling slightly invigorated by the prospect of being rescued from this literal hell. A small moan from the floor drew his attention, and the soldier turned to see half of a paramedic drag himself across the concrete with outstretched arms scrabbling for contact with the living meat so close by. He took a few steps back, picking the nail gun off of the floor and aiming right between the ghoul’s eyes. The zombie let out a horrific screech as the long metal spike sunk into its skull and it slumped back to the floor. 

Four more ghouls fell limp to the pneumatic clatter of the nail gun, dark pus leaking onto the concrete floor from the thin holes in their heads. The sound of an engine could be just barely heard over the clamoring moans outside the garage, and Liam could hear a vehicle pull close to the building. There was a heightened frenzy from the infected outside as they turned to swarm the new arrivals, made more chaotic as continuous gunfire erupted from beyond the walls. 

_“Six-Two, your ride is here.”_

__

“I figured.” 

Liam sidled over to the broken window and peered out, looking around the corner of the building to see that most of the infected were shambling towards the pathway leading up to the garage doors – where the rescue vehicle sat just out of sight. One incredibly chewed-up zombie in hospital scrubs paused and looked at Liam in the window, snarling in his direction. The soldier raised the nail gun and fired right into the creature’s face as he climbed over the broken glass, hefting his bag over the sill and dropping onto the dirt with a soft thud. Liam slid along the wall towards the gunfire and peeked around the corner, finding a dark blue armored police truck idling amidst a growing pile of corpses. A few small gun ports were slid open on the sides of the vehicle, and the occupants inside were firing out at infected that staggered towards them. 

“Hey!” he called, trying to shout loud enough to be heard over the gunfire, zombie moans, and engine noise. “I’m not infected, don’t shoot!” 

He cautiously made his way towards the vehicle, flinching when the rear doors opened with a loud clank. A helmeted soldier stuck his head out and casually regarded Liam from the sights of his L85. 

“Keep still for a second.” 

Before Liam could answer the soldier pulled the trigger on the rifle, the loud bang startling the lance corporal. Something thudded to the ground behind him, and he turned to see a corpse only meters away. 

“Well? Get in, you miserable bastard.” 

Liam obliged, slinging his ruck into the back of the truck and accepting the proffered hand that helped haul him into the vehicle. As soon as he was inside the doors slammed shut, and someone sitting up near the front tapped the driver on the shoulder to signal that it was time to leave. 

The truck lurched forward and the soldier who had pulled Liam inside directed him to a bench seat at the back of the compartment. The man was a private and had the ID patch of the 16 th Air Assault Brigade on his uniform… and still had his rifle pointed in Liam’s direction. 

“No offense, but you look like shit.” And Liam certainly did, streaked with grime and sweat and the dried blood of plenty of people all over him. “I have to make sure you’re not infected, but we don’t have any of the medical equipment with us to do so. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to strip so I can check for bites.” 

“Yeah, alright.” Liam wasn’t going to argue, and although every little movement ached he undid all of his various bootlaces, buttons, and zippers and stripped his uniform off. The private nodded after a second and gestured for Liam to get dressed again. 

“So what’s your story?” asked another soldier sitting two spaces over, the patch of the 7th Parachute Royal Horse Artillery on his uniform and a bloodied MP5 clutched in his hands. 

“Story?” 

“Yeah. What happened to your unit, how did you survive, you know. Me, I was assigned to a field artillery unit with the 7th that was sent in with the 16th-“ he gestured to the other soldier across from Liam “–as part of the Rapid Reaction Force to stabilize London. We were emplaced to the south of the Thames in Battersea Park, providing close fire support for units to the southeast. It was crazy, y’know? Firing on your own city. But it’s what we had to do, and we were doing it all day. The infantry lines that were defending our perimeter were overrun about 12 or 15 hours ago, something like that, and we lasted another hour before the guns themselves were overrun. Didn’t have enough ammo, you see.” 

There was a dull **_thunk_** from the front of the vehicle, and the driver went “ooh, roadkill!” 

“…but while we still had rounds it was quite the fucking spectacle. Fire mission danger close and all that shite, blowing massive holes in the fuckers as they came over the sandbags until the splash damage started hitting us too. We tried to retreat towards the river, pulled the 118s with us and lasted a few more minutes; gave me and a few others enough time to get on a Met Police boat that was passing by. Bless those lads; they decided to stop when we went swimming for them when they could have kept going. They took us to a dock across the river and said to head for Hyde Park for helicopter evacuations. Almost made it out too, but the Mall fell all at once and the commanders there had all the evac birds bug out right quick. So I found this gun and did some street fighting for a little bit until this truck came along. Well, that fucking operations controller actually directed them to me; he saw me on CCTV and decided to send ‘em my way. But there ya have it.” 

He pointed towards some of the other occupants of the truck. “That bloke right there, he’s from the Met’s CO19. Manned a checkpoint at St. Thomas Hospital and helped evacuate uninfected patients until the fuckers started pouring out from the A &E.” 

Next to be introduced was an army Lynx helicopter pilot who had apparently crash landed, one hand wrapped in a splint and the other hand wrapped around the grips of a pistol. 

Sitting across from him was a Ministry of Defence Police constable who had been part of a “cleaning” operation at Central Middlesex Hospital – before the amount of infected patients and staff outnumbered the uninfected ones and necessitated a hasty withdrawal. 

Liam gave a very abridged version of everything, and when he finished his tale of running-and-gunning he was met with a few impressed stares. 

“Shite, you’re lucky to have gotten out of there. I heard most of the Guards were wiped out mate, it sucks.” 

The lance corporal swallowed and stared at his boots for a while. “Yeah, it does. So where are we going?” 

“Well, the fuck out of here, for one. But northwards.” 

“Yeah, but where?” 

“Just… north. As far north as we can get. It’s a nonstop flood of trucks, tanks, trains, cars, buses, planes, even ships all heading north. Whatever’s left of High Command is marshaling resources to try to form a safe zone somewhere north of the Scottish border. From what I’ve heard it’s our only chance.” 

*********

**THURSDAY THE 11 TH – 0700 HOURS**

****

**QUARANTINE SECTOR OMEGA, ZONE 4 – Cumbria County, aboard Evacuation Train 091**

Louis stared out the window as the country rolled by, his knees drawn up to his chest in the seat as he pressed his forehead against the cool glass (or was it plastic?). Every little scene that passed before his eyes differed in a myriad of ways, showcasing the peculiar downfall of life as he knew it. 

Close to London was a mass of abandoned cars at a standstill on the motorways; rapidly retreating armored vehicles fired haphazardly at the droves of infected that streamed down the lanes, setting the cars hit in the crossfire alight and crushing others beneath their treads. Aside from the swarms of infected that looked like angrily buzzing ants at this distance, there was little life among the gridlocked cars and trucks. Most of their owners had long ago fled on foot, desperate to outrun the undead in any way they could. 

Littering the countryside further from the overdeveloped city areas were little disaster scenes of their own: car crashes, large and small, blocking multi-lane carriageways and small two-lane roads alike; clumps of people traveling on foot, on horseback, by bicycle – by any mode of travel possible – along small roads that connected towns or through wide-open fields that stretched across the hills, being followed by groups of staggering figures that had long ago stopped _fleeing_ and were now _pursuing_ ; a massive airliner broken into a dozen pieces at the end of a long dirt furrow in the fields, fire still dancing across most of the wreckage and a few smoldering lumps dragging themselves out from their grave with an insatiable hunger; a few towns here and there that looked absolutely untouched save that the streets were eerily empty. 

As the hours passed, more snapshots of the apocalypse flitted past the window while Louis drifted in and out of a restless sleep. 

A haphazard roadblock of army lorries in the path of a crowd of refugees passed by and he could just glimpse an officer standing on top of the trucks with his arms held out, trying to keep the crowd calm as he bellowed words of reassurance. 

The wreckage of a lorry on a parallel track that undoubtedly tried to cross in front of a previous evacuation train, its trailer twisted and crumpled like a sheet of paper. The train probably didn’t even stop. 

A flashing Highways Agency sign above a motorway that blinked “EVACUATE NORTH” at lanes full of abandoned cars. 

Large columns of smoke in the distance rolled up lazily into the sky; a passing soldier in the aisles remarked it was the whole area of Durham, engulfed in a firestorm since the fire brigade had fled long ago. 

The train lurched as it passed through a switch junction, changing tracks at a speed that was probably a little faster than it was meant to do so. Louis glanced up as a soldier walked between train cars quickly, muttering urgently into his headset. As he went through the door another soldier coming from the opposite direction slid past and stood at the front of the car. 

“We’ll be approaching the border within an hour or so. Upon entering the quarantine checkpoint you will all disembark from the train and get classified into different groups based on your personal information, such as your education level and your recent occupation. No one is being split up from their traveling companions or their family, we are merely taking inventory of who we have, so don’t worry about that. Make sure you bring any bags of belongings with you to the checkpoint so they can be checked for contraband.” 

The soldier then strode down to the next car, slamming the door behind him. 

*******

*********

*******

****

**10 MONTHS AFTER FALL OF LONDON**

****

**DEFENCE INTELLIGENCE FILE K91-4C23-B04**

**[FILED BY SGT. 7103EL – A.I.C.]**

**STIRLING TRANSPORT HUB – QUARANTINE SECTOR ROMEO, NORTHERN ZONES OF REFUGE**

****

**[I find Constable Allan McBride inspecting freight carriages with a detachment of his fellow officers in one of the hub’s rail yards. This train has just returned from a supply run to The Wall and needs to be given the all-clear by the officers on quarantine duty before it can be returned to service. They check the underside of all the carriages and the interior of any enclosed space for any unwanted stowaways, or any of the undead that may have somehow found their way onto the train. Aside from the splattered gore on the first few cars that is hosed off by the decontamination squad (I’m told this is the result of a few Zeds wandering onto the tracks during the journey), the train is otherwise free from any possible hazards and passes the checkpoint.**

****

**Constable McBride is assigned to the Central Constabulary’s Transport Division, given his pre-outbreak familiarity with such policing duties. He wears a dark blue uniform with black accessories that is not much different from that of the pre-Fall police forces; the peaked hat with a blue and white checkerboard band remains the same, though the old-style custodian helmet is rarely ever seen (usually worn by an officer or two with a sense of nostalgia). Most of the collared shirts are made of much more durable material and are dark blue now, with white reserved for the senior-most ranks and ties all but done away with. The pants look like military BDUs with multiple cargo pockets that have just been colored blue, and each officer wears black steel-toed boots. Officers also wear ballistic vests and an assortment of weaponry that is intended for both policing the living and neutralizing the undead.**

****

**McBride sits down on a gantry overlooking the rail yards and undoes the shoulder sling for his submachine gun, hanging it on a nearby post. Unlike their past incarnations from before the outbreak, all officers are now armed without exception.]**

****

**__**

**_Let’s start before the virus hit. You were a police officer even before this, as I understand it?_**

**__**

Yes sir. I was a constable for the British Transport Police, assigned to Division B in London and stationed in the Underground. It was a pretty decent job – I had applied to both BTP and the London Metropolitan Police, and BTP hired me first. Me mum was pleased, figured I’d have an easier time as a transit officer than a “real” policeman. Didn’t have the heart to tell her that there’s just as much crime in the Underground as there is on the streets. Not to mention the whole system could be the target for terrorist attack at any moment – which soon became one of the primary focuses of my duties. After a few years I managed to become an authorised firearms officer and was assigned to one of the BTP’s Armed Response Units; one of our purposes was to guard against terrorist attacks in the Underground, whether they would be on the trains themselves or in the stations or somewhere amongst the labyrinth of infrastructure that made up the Underground. 

**_So if anything happened somewhere in the transit system, you were one of the first people to be sent in response?_**

**__**

Well not necessarily the _first_ ones there, because we always had more unarmed officers than armed, but yes. And I see where you’re going with this. 

It always took us a bit of time to get to an incident somewhere across the system, so we typically operated in roving patrols of at least two men. If the incident didn’t affect the trains so much as it being some other sort of emergency like a person with a weapon, we could often hop onto a train headed towards that station to get there. If the trains were stopped because of an incident we would go aboveground and use BTP police cars from the garages, or coordinate with the Met if necessary. 

Generally speaking, most of our calls were going to be regarding normal criminal activity, not terrorist activity – but you always had to keep your guard up. That’s why when a call with very little information came in, or was unknown completely, it would always set you on edge and cause that little voice to say _“you know, maybe this is the big one”_ in the back of your head. Sure, it could be a mechanical problem that wasn’t figured out yet – or it could be the precursor to a gas attack or a suicide bomber. 

When all of _it_ began, that’s exactly what happened. 

**_So for you, how did all of ‘it’ begin?_**

**__**

In hindsight, before I even knew it had done so. Before the first major incident – the omen of what was to come, if you will – there were a few minor incidents that really should have set off alarm bells if we had known what to look for. But we didn’t, of course. 

**_Such as?_** ****

****

A few missing persons out beyond the rail yards – to be fair, that was more of the local constabularies’ domain, we were only informed because of the close proximity to the transit network. At first it was normal, but the numbers started to grow higher than we had ever seen at once. At the same time we had a rise in the number of people being struck by trains, and quite a few of them were some of the missing persons we had received earlier notification about. It was rather unusual. 

The local homeless population started disappearing as well. Most commuters don’t pay them any mind, but we got to know many of them in the course of shooing them out of the public areas in the stations. Over a few days they started to disappear from their usual spots where they’d catch a kip or panhandle – even we didn’t notice at first, but you’d realize that you hadn’t seen Dublin Danny or Maggie the Cat Lady in a couple of days and you’d get a little worried for them. Hopefully they had just found somewhere else to hang out for a bit, but I don’t quite believe it. 

And some of the more notorious ones to us – the drunkards, the drug abusers, one or two of the schizos – would show up rambling like madmen about things that weren’t really believable. Not that they weren’t usually rambling about aliens or the government or something, but this was unusual even for them. Talk of someone eating live rats in the tunnels, or getting an arm torn off by a train without flinching, or following them around in some slow, creepy way. The kind of stuff that was easy to dismiss as “not my problem, mate.” 

**_And did you ever find evidence of their claims?_**

**[McBride points at a rat scurrying along the rails below us.]**

Maintenance workers found a few of those bastards torn in half in some of the tunnels. No one could quite explain it other than that there must’ve been some larger animal preying on them in the network - maybe a large feral cat or dog, something like that. 

But well, in hindsight… you know. 

**_But if there were infected in the tunnels in those early days, wouldn’t they have been spotted? All of that CCTV, your roving officers, and the sheer number of people would make it seem that something mindlessly wandering around would be unable to avoid detection._ **

**__**

I’ll let you in on a little secret; we were more than a little underfunded. The whole Underground was fiscally strapped, really, not just us. If it wasn’t deemed absolutely critical it was waitlisted, so if a CCTV camera broke at one of the smaller stations it often wouldn’t be repaired for weeks. If it had been one of the larger stations deemed as more likely terrorism targets it was fixed almost right away, but we could only do so much. 

It was the same thing with our officers. You remember all of the budget cuts over the years – who was always the first budget to get cut? And if it wasn’t the police forces being cut, it was the fire brigades. We could barely afford the reduced staff of officers we had on already, no one wanted to spend the money to add more cops. 

As far as commuters not coming across the early infected? I have no idea. Maybe it was just dumb luck, maybe there weren’t that many in the very early stages. It was certainly possible – they could have wandered around some of the underused tunnels for ages, getting hit by trains before ever getting into the public spaces. 

There was no way of knowing for exactly how long this was going on; it just sort of crept up on us over the weeks. And when we finally turned around to stare it in the face, you can be damn sure a lot of us regretted working underground with a limited choice of exits. 

**_What was the tipping point for the Underground?_**

**__**

It came in innocuous enough, just after three in the morning – Transit for London had recently started the 24-hour tube service that they’d been promising for years. Control advised us of a train stalled in tunnels eastbound of Earl’s Court Station, on the District line. At first it could have been anything, but they confirmed it wasn’t a power issue so it was either mechanical or operator-caused. They were unable to raise the motorman on the radio, so that made it a bit more serious and the decision was made to send a team of our officers and paramedics down the tracks with some transit workers to investigate. 

I arrived at Earl’s Court, the hastily-established incident command centre, just as they were setting to go out. Control informed us they had received a 999 call earlier from the train, but it cut out after a second and they only heard some people yelling. 

****

The ranking officer on scene decided to dispense with the typical response team and make one of fully firearms officers. We double-checked our weapons and then proceeded down the tracks toward the stopped train – the Underground control centre had cut the power to that section so we didn’t have to worry about the third rail. 

It took us about two minutes to reach the train, and it was easy to tell on our approach that something was very, very wrong. 

**[He remains silent for a bit, staring at a train that passes beneath us, and I’m not sure if he’ll elaborate.]**

****

**_How so?_**

**__**

The windows – the windows of the cars were covered with something. Absolutely _splattered_ everywhere, you couldn’t see much of the inside of the closest car. It made every hair on your body stand up, and the team sort of slowed down for a bit as we tried to figure out just what it was that we were looking at. Now the power had been cut, but the emergency lighting had kicked on and it bathed everything in a dull orange glow that was cut up by the beams of the flashlights mounted on our MP5s. 

It became apparent once we cracked open the door on the end of the train that it was all blood. 

Dark red and brownish-black all over the place, and it hung in the very air we were breathing. Really nasty, like you could almost taste that metallic, decaying smell at the back of your tongue. In addition to all the blood were small bits of flesh or other ‘organic material’ on the floor and a few of the plastic seats. I think I saw a finger on the floor, one that had a wedding ring on it, but I was too busy looking down the sights of my weapon to do a closer examination. 

That first car was empty, but we were coming from the rear of the train – both the lead car and ourselves were facing eastbound, so we were working our way up from the back. We radioed Control what we were seeing and they were just as confused as we were. 

The second car was also empty, and there was a lot less blood in it; just a thick streak of it that was smeared right down the middle of the car. We could make out a few bloody handprints that seemed to indicate the person was in a prone position and dragging themselves towards the front of the train. 

In the next car was something a little more substantial – a corpse, but only recognizable as one because its legs were still intact. Everything from the waist up was completely mutilated; it was horrific. I had seen less gore from people who had gone under a train and been cut to pieces. We radioed it in and kept advancing, and all radio traffic ceased so I knew Control was up to something. Probably calling important people and waking them up, given the unknown nature of what we were reporting. 

The next car, the front car, held five more bodies – only five, since it was rather early in the morning – that were also heavily mutilated and haphazardly strewn all over the place. It was a scene of absolute chaos, I’ll tell you that. Blood everywhere, a bunch of damage to the doors where it looked like some of the victims were trying to force them open to escape. The door to the operator’s cab was bashed in and the motorman was dead too; all torn up like the others. 

**_Were any infected in the car? Naturally, if you were the first on scene, the attacker or attackers should have still been there…_**

**__**

None that were up and moving about. It appears that the motorman managed to club his attacker in the head with a flashlight hard enough to crack the skull and destroy the brain, but he bled out shortly thereafter from a substantial wound to his neck. None of the corpses had reanimated at that point – but as we were standing there, boots firmly planted in pools of blood, a constable noticed that one of the victims was twitching on the floor. Nothing really obvious at first, but every so often there would be a little tremor in her right hand. 

Naturally, we radioed for Control to send the paramedics down to the train and that we were going to provide medical assistance. I had barely begun to open my first aid pouch when our superior came on the air and told us to leave the train. 

**_He wanted you to leave?_**

**__**

Yeah. I believe his exact words were _“negative, you are to withdraw immediately. Get out of there.”_

**_Did he sound worried at all?_**

Of course he did! We were all worried! Here we were on a stalled commuter train, deep underground with no power, and it looked like someone had just filmed a slasher movie right where we were all standing. We turned and went single-file out the rear door of that train so fast you would have thought it was a drill. 

As we were made our way through the tunnel back to the station, a squad of men – and one woman, I think – were making their way down the tracks to the train. They were all wearing blue HAZMAT suits that completely enclosed their bodies, and they didn’t say a word to us. They were carrying large toolboxes and had holstered pistols on these black belts over their suits; I couldn’t tell if they were military or not, but they were serious business. I think they neutralized all of the corpses before they could fully reanimate. 

Now that I think about it, we were lucky we hadn’t gotten to the train just a little bit later, because if one of the victims had reanimated we wouldn’t have known how dangerous it was. We would have tried to administer first aid, or summoned help – the last thing any of us would have thought to do would be to _shoot_ them, and definitely not in the head. It would have been a disaster. 

Once we reached the platform some blokes in suits were waiting for us – the type with ties, mind you, not HAZMAT suits. They listened to what we had seen for a bit, before making us sign some Official Secrets Act paperwork. I wouldn’t quite say we were threatened, but it was made clear that as far as any of us were concerned, this night had never happened. We weren’t allowed to leave for several more hours. 

**_So the response was swift from higher authorities._**

**__**

Oh yes. Whatever had indicated to them that this was more than just an unusual transit incident certainly got them moving quickly. But that’s what I find most unsettling about that night, you know? 

**_What, their response?_**

They had everything: the armed personnel in HAZMAT suits who neutralized the corpses before they could rise – I heard the gunshots myself – and then proceeded to process the scene, men from some part of the security services who ensured that the first responders such as myself were sworn to secrecy, and perfect scene containment and cleanup all before the morning rush hour. The infection had not been announced yet, and I think this was more than a week before the dead were walking through the streets, so how did they know? ** __**

How did they know _exactly_ what to do? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been a while. More will come soon (don't know exactly when, but just hold on a bit)!

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a rather long work of mine, previously started on another site but now resurrecting itself here. The storyline will take a bit to develop, so bear with me; there will be other minor characters introduced along the way and all of our major characters have to get to the right spot in their journeys to meet, but rest assured they'll all end up together.
> 
> It's going to be a story that, at least in the beginning, is formatted somewhat irregularly and might even be confusing at first, with the scene jumping forwards and backwards and between characters, but I desire it to be that way to fully envelop you in the downright chaotic fall of society. I also have a small plan set aside for filler chapters between scenes, if I'm behind on my writing or otherwise, that may not even involve our main characters but either introduce a minor character or provide background context and information around the apocalypse as a whole. It's a rather audacious writing style and perhaps will feel stitched together, but hopefully you'll all enjoy it.


End file.
